


Yet Here You Stand (A Snarry Novella)

by sarkysue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: snape_potter, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkysue/pseuds/sarkysue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can we ever see ourselves as we really are? Sometimes we need to look through someone else’s eyes, and even then the truth can change. Over ten years we visit Harry and Snape on Harry’s Birthday, starting from when they are forced together in 1998 to keep Harry safe.  I wanted to give both Harry and Severus the chance to be broken and to learn how to live with themselves. I hope I’ve done them proud.<br/>Warning: Contains scenes of domestic abuse that may be disturbing and/or a trigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet Here You Stand (A Snarry Novella)

**Author's Note:**

> Not DH compliant. (Bellatrix and Snape, obvs, are still alive). Format pinched from One Day by David Nicholls, but doesn’t follow the same plot in anyway, though it does mean that the timeline is not linear. Part One is 1998-2007, Part Two is 2006 back to 1998 (revisiting the days in Part One) and the Epilogue is 2008.  
> Beta: bethbethbeth  
> Warning: Contains scenes of domestic abuse that may be disturbing and/or a trigger.

Part One

**To Spinner’s End**

 

31st July 1998

 

Harry wonders why on earth Snape is here as he watches him across the room. He looks out of place amongst the soft chintz and sandy wood of the Weasley’s sunny kitchen, like a long black splinter. Mr and Mrs Weasley are talking to him quietly in a huddle in a corner, all crammed together by the sink and the over-piled draining board. Snape’s eyes are remaining low, restlessly skirting over the tiled floor. His skin is waxy and grey and his hands are gripping the counter top hard enough to turn his knuckles white, like it’s taking all his effort to keep himself upright.

“This one’s from Teddy,” Hermione tells Harry, and he drags his eyes back to the circle of people sitting around him. Hermione carefully places a dozing bundle of baby in his arms, a neatly wrapped gift balanced on his tummy, and Harry has to concentrate as he holds Teddy in one arm and tries to open the present with the other. Hermione laughs and reaches a hand to hold down the package so Harry can pull the ribbon off.

“It’s the best thing for you both,” Arthur Weasley tells Severus for what could well be the hundredth time, his face as earnest as his thoughts, neither of which Severus wants to see. He doesn’t answer and feels satisfied with the nervous glance he catches Weasley sharing with his wife. From the other side of the room light glints off Potter’s glasses, telling him he’s being watched, and he shakes his hair down further over his face.

“And besides,” says Molly Weasley, her tone gently grating. “All that work for nothing, for him to come to harm now? It’s the only way he’ll be kept safe and— ”

Severus cuts her off with an irritable sigh and a long hard stare that makes her recoil, just a fraction, but not small enough to escape his notice. It serves her right for boring him with her endless placations about something he has agreed to do, _and_ for thinking her opinion likely to persuade him either way. Any surprise at their willingness for his presence has long since been jostled away by their dull kindness. 

“Cake, Mum,” Ginevra Weasley says in a stage whisper and they start bustling around the kitchen counter, stepping around Severus’s long black legs. Molly is glad to have something to do other than watch his pained movements (well, he would refuse a chair). She busies herself with lighting candles with the tip of her wand, the warmth of the flames a soothing antidote to the coldness in Severus’s eyes. As much as she’s sympathetic to the man’s cause, she can’t help wishing away his haunted presence, creeping as it does into everything around him.

Severus watches the candles cast soft shadows on her face, the crinkle of smiley crows-feet contrasting with the deep lines of her forehead, and snakes his eyes back to the floor. He wishes he’d come later. He should have known that Potter would have a birthday party in the style of a three year old. He thinks about waiting outside, or coming back later even, but knows his energy is too low as it is. _Aconite, acromantula venom, agrippa,_ he recites in his head as the rest of the house bursts into song.

Harry cuts the cake and lifts slices onto the pieces of kitchen paper Hermione holds out to him. When everyone else has got a piece he looks to Snape and holds a slice aloft.

Severus turns his head swiftly away and imagines the shrug Potter does. _Baneberry, belladonna, bezoar_ , Severus continues in his mind until the room goes quiet.

The mouthful of cake in Harry’s mouth nearly chokes him, the icing sticking to the roof of his mouth unpleasantly. Snape’s eyes flick around the rest of them, watching the way they’re glued to Potter’s face, cake forgotten, as the boy wonder is asked if he wouldn’t mind moving to Spinner’s End for his unforeseeable future.

Harry finally manages to swallow and looks up in time so see Snape’s eyes slide away from him. The room finally feels the right atmosphere for this birthday, awkward and stiff. Better than George’s unsmiling jokes. Better than showering Teddy with smiles and not mentioning Remus or Tonks. Better than ignoring the harbinger of doom currently lurking in the kitchen.

Molly’s looking apprehensive, Arthur behind her with a hand of support on her back, and Severus swells with impatience. He claws the kitchen counter to stop himself from grabbing the slack jawed saviour and dragging him home with him, whether he agrees to it or not.

“It’s not that we don’t want you here, Harry dear,” Molly says, her hands twisting up the front of her apron into bunches. “But all of us are at risk from Bellatrix right now, not just you.”

“It’s ok,” Harry tells her and means it: two attacks on the Burrow in the last week, the last one dangerously close to maiming Ron (who only just slipped through the wards in time, a scorch mark the size of a tennis ball blistered across the back of his ankle). He knows he can no longer put them through it.

“Why there though, why Spinner’s End?” Harry asks quietly.

They tell him the plan in rushes, taking it in turns to interrupt each other whilst Teddy makes snuffling noises from the crook of Harry’s arm.

“…best if the public think you’ve left the country and gone into hiding elsewhere. No-one would suspect anyone to be living in Severus’s house now they’ve destroyed it.”

“…Bellatrix won’t stop until she kills you and you don’t have the prophecy to protect you now…”

“…it will be just until they are caught, Harry dear…”

The last sane thread of Bellatrix’s mind had finally been severed when she’d learnt of Snape’s betrayal and for a while her full focus had been on destroying any remnants of the man. She’d spent a whole day blasting spells at the house in Spinner’s End until it was nothing more than a pile of smoking rubble. Then she’d moved onto kidnapping Ministry officials, screeching and clawing with dirty bloody hands for Snape’s body. In the end the Ministry had held a fake cremation just so as they could get her off their cases and not lose any more staff. Unbeknown to Bellatrix, the house had been under protection, not enough to completely salvage it, but enough for it to be rebuilt to house Snape once he’d woken from his coma.

“…this way you and Severus will both be protected, hidden. They think him dead, it’s the safest place for you, for you both,” Molly says, and wills herself to not get emotional. It was good that this was happening, that Harry would be safe, but it feels like another arrow to her heart to send him away, to not be able to keep him safe herself. She wishes she could hold him, hold all of them, wrap them up in her arms and vow never to let them go again.  She looks at Harry’s solemn face and bites her lip. He was too young and looked too old, skinny with grief, though they’d all lost weight. In Harry it jarred with his face, making him look like a tiny old man, his eyes too resigned, his chin not quite defiant enough and his bony arms making the sleeves of his t-shirt baggy. She swallows and feels Arthur spread his hand across her back. She leans back into him.

“…and we can all still come and visit, sneak you out occasionally…”

“…and Severus has kindly agreed to tutor you for your N.E.W.T.s so you’ll be able to study in private, without having to go back to Hogwarts, which is what you wanted wasn’t it, Harry dear…?”

Their tentative manner produces an uncharitable swell of annoyance in Harry as they continue to make a perfectly reasonable plan seem like a precious favour. He knows he can’t keep going on the way he has been, not with Bellatrix and her band of lunatics bursting out of the shadows every time he goes anywhere, trying to blow up every building that he’s in. In comparison, moving in with Snape is hardly the end of the world. And if anything, it might just assuage the gnawing anxiety left within Harry since Snape’s limp body had been prised out of his hands twelve weeks earlier. The metallic smell of Snape’s near death is still fresh enough in Harry’s memory for it to fill his nose and throat and turn his stomach. He drags himself back to the Weasley’s faltering details before his mind flings him back into that dark, blood-soaked shack.

“…the Ministry will provide you with long-term aliases, of course…”

“…you’ll become practically invisible to the rest of the Wizarding world, you’ll have peace and quiet at last…No-one but us here, and Minerva will know where you are…”

“…We’ll be telling Andromeda, so that we can set up a way of you staying in contact with Teddy..”

“Right,” Harry says, and nods as he tries to retain all the particulars.

“So I’ll be leaving tonight?” he asks.

“Yes dear. Whenever you’re ready, no rush.”

Severus exhales a loud impatient breath that only he hears and scowls, unseen in the kitchen, as he watches Harry place the baby in Molly Weasley’s arms.

“Better get packing,” Harry tells her, and Severus wants to bark at him to hurry the bloody hell up. In bitter silence he watches the boy head for the stairs, Granger and Ronald Weasley closely behind him. The Weasley girl stays downstairs and he watches her shuffle along to sit closer to her mother, a consoling pat placed on her shoulder.

Upstairs Harry, Ron and Hermione mumble reassurances to each other as they gather his belongings from around Ron’s room.

 “It’s fine, it won’t be long… they’ll catch Bellatrix soon…” Ron says with clunky nonchalance, his eyes unsubtly searching Harry’s. Harry looks away and focuses on summoning socks into his hands and flinging them in his trunk.

“Oh absolutely. I’m sure it will go really quickly… studying for your N.E.W.T.s and everything…”

Hermione’s looking at him too and Harry mumbles, “Toilet,” nodding his head toward the hallway, leaving them to pack the last few bits.

As his stream of piss hits the bowl, Harry feels some of his tension ease, though he can’t stop trying to imagine the unlikely prospect of living with Snape. Having seen Snape’s house from the outside go from plain grey stone to a pile of rubble, he can only wonder what the inside is like. He briefly sees himself in a darkened room, Snape in a high wingback chair sipping brandy by a monstrous marble fireplace, a craggy butler lurking in the shadows. He sees Snape’s long delicate fingers holding the glass to his lips, the profile of his nose silhouetted against the firelight.

In the bathroom mirror Harry looks pale and uneasy. It’ll be ok, he tells himself. It’ll be fine, but the words are not sufficient to calm the complex anxiety he feels about living with a man who both hates him _and_ would die for him.

Hermione and Ron are standing just inside the doorway when he comes back and Hermione reaches he arms around his neck. He pushes his face into her hair and grips her back and Ron reaches long arms around them both.

Downstairs Severus shakes his head as Arthur Weasley asks him once again if he’d like a drop of anything. Harry comes back down the stairs, Granger, Weasley and his trunk trailing after him. Severus half listens as Molly Weasley witters on at him about floo visits and getting Potter to the Burrow once in a while and keeping them up to date with how he gets on with his N.E.W.T. studies. He nods in the right places and keeps his eyes fixed on the mole on her left cheek. Over her round shoulder Potter is rocking the baby.

Later when there doesn’t seem to be anything left to say, Harry stands from where he’s been sat on the edge of the armchair and passes Teddy to Mr Weasley.

“Right,” he says with finality and everyone gives him weak smiles that make Severus loathe them all the more. He walks past them to the hook that hangs his cloak. He buttons it up and doesn’t listen as goodbyes are said from the next room. Potter eventually comes, dragging his heels and Severus wants to tell him that he hates him, that he hates this plan, and that he’s far more selfless than Potter is for agreeing to this, agreeing to have his life dominated, again, by the boy’s precious safety. He doesn’t though, just grits his teeth as Potter puts on a large hooded jumper, and ignores the boy as he tries to look at him.

Over Snape’s shoulder Harry can see Ron and Hermione curled up in the armchair, Ron curling a piece of her hair around his finger and gently tugging it. Molly is absently rubbing at George’s shoulders as she smiles down at Teddy stretched out on Arthur’s lap. Beside him, Snape’s face is mostly hidden by his curtain of black hair and he stands with his arms folded as Harry bends to pull his feet into scruffy trainers. When he’s ready, Harry looks to him but Snape doesn’t meet his eye, just turns on his heel and walks stiffly towards the kitchen fireplace. Harry follows the clipped sound of his shoes on the wooden floor and the rigid shoulders of his black clad back.

 

They floo into a dark kitchen, a small grubby window offering little light and Harry can barely make out Snape in front of him. It’s cold and creepy, and Harry’s skin prickles up all goosey.

Severus flicks his wand and Harry’s trunk disappears, and then heads into the gloom of the house. Harry rushes after him, down a narrow corridor, not wanting to be left behind in a kitchen that feels like it might absorb him into its darkness.

He finds Snape in a corner by the bottom of some wooden stairs. It’s too dark to see up them, so it looks a bit like they lead to nothing, just an eerie empty space.

“Shoes off, and cloaks…” Severus slides an eye over Harry’s hoodie, “Or whatever, hung up there.” He nods to the cloak stand, but doesn’t remove his own as he heads back up the gloomy hallway.

Harry toes his shoes off and wriggles out of his jumper, and then dithers by the foot of the stairs. He’s jangly with nerves and is fighting a strong impulse to just flee out of the front door, to get as far away as possible.

A dim light glows through a doorway, just warm enough for Harry to want to move towards it and he heads back down the corridor. Inside a small sitting room, Snape’s standing with his back to him, pouring brandy into a glass. A couple of gas lamps light the room dully, and Harry’s eyes scan across the fireplace and the few odd bits of furniture, the book cases stretching across two whole walls..

Severus stiffens as he hears the tread of floor boards and Potter creeping in to stand quietly, unsurely in his sitting room, in his house. He drinks his drink in one, and pours himself another.

The swish of the liquid hitting the bottom of the glass sounds amplified, and the silence that follows, leaving Harry standing in the doorway ignored, is enough to make him bite down on the inside of his cheek. He feels tired and grumpy, has had too many sweets earlier in the day, and he wishes Hermione was here, or Molly Weasley, Ginny even, someone who would smile and pat his hand and pretend not to notice his mood, someone who would fetch him a drink and tell him to sit down and make himself comfortable, someone who would fuss over him.

Severus lights a cigarette, his hands slightly unsteady as he holds his wand tip to the cigarette. He takes a deep soothing drag, and Harry watches the smoke curl out around him.

 “Um, can I have one?” he asks and his voice sounds tiny and weird. “A drink I mean, not a cigarette.” He huffs out a little bit of a laugh and bites his lip when Snape doesn’t respond.

Eventually, Snape turns slowly, the low shadows of the room falling into the hollows of his cheeks and his sunken eye sockets so that all Harry can make out of his eyes is a glint of reflected light. He eyes Harry over his glass, poised like a long scraggy cat, watchful and ghoulish and again Harry wants to run.

He lets go of a breath he hadn’t known he was holding as Snape summons a glass and fills it. He doesn’t move, just floats the glass over and watches as Harry takes it and mumbles thanks.

As he takes a sip, Snape’s eyes on him feel like the weight of the world and he wants to say how weird it is to be here, how sorry he is, for everything. How grateful. Snape’s unbroken gaze pins him where he is and the words slip back down his throat.

Severus wishes him away with a hard stare and turns his back to him. Potter’s presence, contained in this room with just himself and his demons for company, suddenly feels like madness, madness that nearly babbles out of him in cackles. He refills his glass. The boy behind him is tentative, watchful, waiting for him, of all things, of all people, to do something. He breathes out slowly.

“Your room is on the first floor, on the left. On the right is the bathroom. My quarters are on the second floor. You are not permitted any further than the first floor.” It takes effort to say the words and Severus closes his eyes and breathes, breathes.

Harry senses he’s being dismissed, but he hasn’t finished his drink yet and besides, isn’t there so much to say? He doesn’t even know for sure what the Ministry’s restrictions are on Snape’s release. He looks at Snape’s back, narrow and tall, the strength of his posture, and feels very small. All Snape’s earlier exhaustion seems gone, he stands stiff and powerful and brimming with something Harry does not understand. Finally, he admits defeat and silently creeps to the cabinet, putting his glass down next to Snape’s without looking at him.

Upstairs he undresses quickly, shivering though it’s mild. His room is bare and undecorated, but the bed is soft. He curls himself into a ball under the covers and wishes that a good old cry was enough to rid the knots tying up inside him. He hears sudden loud noises from downstairs and sits up. He thinks about the impossibility of going downstairs and instead scrabbles to get something from his trunk, something comforting. He settles on a jumper, old and holey but knitted in Molly Weasley’s hand. He winds it around his head, wrapping it in safety, protecting his head and mind, so that all he can hear is the pulse of his own heartbeat in his ears as he completely submerges himself under the duvet.

Downstairs Severus smashes the glass he’s drunk from. He smashes Harry’s glass and the near empty bottle of brandy. He keeps smashing until there is nothing left in reach to break, then looks at the tiny slivers of blood seeping from unseen cuts on the palm of his hand. Rage and grief seem to splinter his insides and he wants to drag Potter out of bed and roar at him until his throat is sore. He wants to show him every scar, he wants to make him feel every single piece of pain that tears at his heart all day of every day. He wants to make him suffer it all. He sees the boy stood tiny in his doorway, sad and weary, all bones and sunken eyes and with nothing left for Severus to take. He hangs his head.

Enough, he thinks. This is all. This will be all. And he reaches for his wand and undoes the mess.

 

 

**Amongst Company**

 

July 31st 1999

 

Over the top of his newspaper Severus Snape sees the kitchen door open and a plump old lady appear from under an invisibility cloak, a broom clutched in her hands and a sheen of sweat across her forehead. The hair emerging from out of the cloak is set in tight curls and has had a bright blue rinse through it. She wears an odd ensemble of clothes: a floral dress covered by a Quidditch bib, tan tights that go into a pair of trainers, and large horn-rimmed glasses that are slipping down her nose.

“Shoes, Potter,” Severus says and doesn’t look up.

The old lady mutters under her breath and hooks her trainers off with her toes.

Severus takes a sip of tea and carries on reading the newspaper as the woman makes herself toast and plonks down on the seat opposite him. By the time Snape has finished his tea, Harry Potter is sitting where the woman was, a large floral smock gaping at his neck, the horn-rimmed glasses folded on the table, replaced by the round spectacles perching on his nose. Severus doesn’t look at the creamy curve of shoulder Potter exposes as he reaches for the marmalade, nor at the shapely calf as he hitches his dress up to wriggle out of his tights.

“When will your guests be arriving?” Severus asks in the rare civil tone he’s adopted for special occasions like Potter’s birthday. He folds his newspaper and clears his breakfast things away with a twitch of his wand.

He hears Potter swallow a mouthful of toast. “Twelveish,” he says, and Severus wants to point out that that is not a word, but doesn’t, nodding stiffly and leaving the boy alone in the kitchen. In his study, he wishes he could choose to spend the day alone with the numerous scrolls of parchment scattering his desk, but knows that he will not. His mental well-being requires company – regardless of the type – much more than it needs solitude. And at least he and Potter haven’t had any recent altercations to be cagey about.

In the front room Harry straightens the cushions on the sofa, again, and feels a gurgle of anticipation in his stomach. Being in company was more and more taxing the longer he and Snape were cooped up together, Harry’s usual social ease becoming harder to imitate the less public practice he had. Christmas at the Burrow had been odd and difficult, and far from the relaxing break he’d been expecting. He’d found himself watching the festivities as if on the outside, going through the motions of revelry rather than feeling it. He must have acted his usual self though because no one asked if anything was wrong.

Now, he checks himself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, turning his head from side to side to make sure there is nothing revealing on display. His sigh is almost rueful at the sight of his mark-free skin. But there wouldn’t be anything there of course: he and Snape hadn’t gone at each other for months, though perhaps something was simmering around his birthday. Not a fan of celebratory occasions was old Snape. The last time must have been in April. No, May, the Battle Anniversary. That had been particularly gratuitous, Harry coming back from getting the morning paper to find both Snape and the house in complete disarray, Snape lunging for him as soon as Harry had got through the front door, bony hands soaring up out of the mess of empty bottles and cigarette butts to claw at Harry’s throat. Snape’s rage had gone on for days, only abating when Harry threatened to get the Ministry involved. Snape had apparated mid lurch, and turned up two days later, clean and sharp-eyed and ignoring Harry’s presence completely for weeks.

Harry sighs again, and then catches himself. More worrying than their penchant for half-murdering each other is how it has become a source of comfort for him. He rakes a hand through his hair, absently palming his scar. His heart beats in an anxious skitter as he remembers that his guests will soon be arriving. It will be fine, he tells himself. He’s only tense because he hasn’t left Spinner’s End since Easter and that was just to go to the Ministry to sit his exams. Hermione and Ron had gone off after theirs, to see some of the world, they’d written, and Harry had tried not to set the stupid letter on fire. Over the months his friends had slowly slipped from the centre of his life, pushed away by his inability to communicate what was happening in Spinner’s End, and though he had no desire to tell them, or bridge the distance (namely because he knew they’d make him stop), it didn’t prevent the resentment he nurtured for their ability to move on without him. In his lonelier times he berates himself for not working harder to keep them close, but then he knew the choice he was making in the first month here, when the tension with Snape first split apart and he didn’t seek them for counsel. He and Snape had yelled and screamed, anger so expressive and freeing that Harry never imagined it could exist. They’d lashed at each other and every strike had set Harry’s heart soaring. It was like a new type of magic, something he’d never felt before, the combining of it with such emotion, such rage, such sorrow, and having a worthy opponent with which to bestow it on. Harry’s strength was the only thing that could rival Snape’s skill, and as for Snape, for someone previously so contained… A pressure cooker was simply not an adequate metaphor. He was like an explosion, but the biggest most sensual explosion than anyone could ever imagine. Snape moved the earth. It was escape, sweet freedom, blood and pain and feeling, at last, to be so alive. And of course none of which he could put into a letter to Hermione and Ron. After awhile it turned out that there was nothing much else he was interested in. The feeling of Snape consumed him. He could feel him all the time, the twitch of his magic, the swell, the build up. It crackled through his skin, thrummed right through to his core, and though Harry had no explanation for feeling it, he didn’t care. He just wanted more.

The clock says quarter to twelve and Harry dithers, wishing that Snape was the sort of person to let a place get untidy so that he’d have something to do with his hands, but as it is the house is always kept immaculate. Though it is not exactly sparse, it is far from luxurious; elegant rather than ornate, the furniture a tasteful antique oak, dark and polished, that suits the dark emerald green wallpaper. Everything seems to be old – the dark curls of wood on the back of the chairs, the elegant feet of cabinets – but Harry suspects that they come from Snape’s skills at transfiguration rather than because they were antique. The floors are dark and varnished, save for the odd dark green rug here and there. There are a few ornaments dotted about; a statue of a proud looking man carved in ebony, something of the Snape around his nose, a small silver doe on the mantelpiece that always makes Harry’s stomach drop when he sees it.

His favourite thing by far is a photo of a young Snape and his mother that is on the wall behind the armchair in the sitting room. It’s the only photo Harry has seen of either of them where they don’t look cross and sour, displeased to be having their photo taken. In this photograph Snape’s stance is imperious, dressed in what look like Hogwarts robes, and Mrs Snape blinks down at him with near affection and almost smiles at the camera. This boy-Snape, who must only be eleven, looks at Harry with mild disdain but doesn’t hide his face behind his hair, and his quick, dark eyes stare back. It’s like this Snape doesn’t know yet how much he hates him and Harry has spent a long time over the past year looking at him.

He glances at the clock and sees that it’s five to twelve. As he looks around the room, he catches sight of himself again in the mirror above the mantelpiece, his hair sticking up comically from where he has run nervous hands through it.

From the hall, Severus watches him through a sliver of doorway as Harry frowns at himself in the mirror and starts twiddling with his hair. He watches as Harry moves on to his clothes, fiddling with the hem of a buttercup yellow t-shirt, his scar creasing along ridges of forehead. One thing for Muggle clothing, Severus thinks as he watches Harry tug his jeans up, is that it shows off the form nicely. He pushes the door open and avoids meeting Potter’s eyes in the mirror. The whoosh of the fireplace excuses talk as one-by-one grinning buffoons clutching gifts floo into his sitting room. He nods as he greets them, staying near the door so he won’t have to shake hands or, god forbid, kiss cheeks. People are settling down in seats, a buzz of chatter that Severus finds disconcerting. He’s just contemplating going back to his study after all when there’s a slight hum and Minerva McGonagall is stepping out, eyeing him shrewdly, and Severus has to work hard to not beam at her.

Soon after, when Severus and Minerva are settled in two high-backed chairs in the corner, Harry watches Snape brush the hair back from his face, an absentminded gesture that Harry cannot remember seeing before, and say something that makes Minerva McGonagall smile.

Harry glances at the book he’s just unwrapped – _One Thousand and One Wizarding Puzzles_ – and grins absently at Molly Weasley.

“Thank you!” he says, and watches Snape’s long pale fingers pick up the pretty cup from his saucer and bring it to his mouth.

“This is from us,” Hermione tells him, and a heavy parcel is placed into his arms.

“Wow!” he exclaims as a pile of books tumble out of the wrapping paper. “Thanks guys!” Behind them Minerva gives a snort of laughter and Snape’s eyes sparkle as he takes another sip of tea. Harry is passed an oddly coloured cactus, and tries not to feel hurt by how different Snape looks in someone else’s company. He stares at the cactus in his hand.

“It’s from Neville,” Ginny tells him. “He says Happy Birthday wherever you are.”

 

 Later, when ample tea has been drunk, Molly hands out bottles of ale and glasses of wine.

“What did Snape get you?” Ron asks in a voice too loud for Severus to ignore.

“Oh I’m sure he’s got some big surprise lined up for me. An elaborate firework display, a solid gold watch, tickets to see my favourite band, that sort of thing.” Severus looks up and catches their smiles.

He looks down at the near-empty glass of beetroot wine he’s nursing. “I’ve got Potter the same thing he got me,” he says quietly.

“What was that?” Weasley asks, his eyes flicking between the two of them.

“He went away for two days,” Harry says. He looks at Ron and shrugs and continues to fold up the wrapping paper that is scattered on the hearth rug.

“And I basked in the glorious solitude,” Severus says, draining his glass.

“Is that what you’ve got me then, you going away?” Harry picks at a bit of spell-o-tape from the floor and doesn’t look up.

“Not exactly, I don’t quite trust you not to destroy the house in my absence. Or to rifle through my drawers.” He pauses to give Harry the chance to remember the Battle of the Attic, a three day epic the time he caught Harry up there, engrossed in a crate of his personal belongings. Harry keeps any reaction out of his face, but glances shiftily around the room. “But I do intend to stay well clear of you.” Snape tells him.

“You barely talk to me anyway, what will be the difference?” Harry says, more sourly than he’d intended.

Snape looks thoughtful. “Well then, I promise to not say anything to you at all if I happen to see you in passing.”

“You mean you won’t say ‘Potter you’re chewing too loudly,’ or ‘Potter you really are the most obnoxious cretin I’ve ever had the displeasure of teaching’ or ‘if you do that one more time Potter I’ll ring your scrawny little neck,’ or—”

“Andromeda will be here with Teddy soon,” Molly Weasley interjects loudly and brightly, trying to subtly shift in front of Harry’s eye line. She doesn’t like the colour that has gone to his cheeks, the dark flash in his eyes that makes him look unlike himself.

Severus ignores her. “And you said I barely spoke to you, you just proved yourself a liar, Potter.”

“Barking criticisms and threats isn’t the same thing as speaking to someone.” The tension is spreading over the room, seeping into the faces of all his guests, but Harry does nothing to stop it.

“I bet you haven’t seen him in ages, Harry, I hear he’s walking and—” Molly’s positively bobbing about in her chair, but Harry doesn’t register her.

“What would you prefer, a little bow every time you walk into a room? A round of applause when I see you in the hallways? …And I will do more than wring your neck if you ever disregard my orders again.” Snape’s eyes glitter in a way he saves especially for threats that Harry knows aren’t empty, and he can almost feel the cold hands around his throat. Their eyes meet and there is the briefest acknowledgement of things left unsaid. Harry can see all the things Snape usually needles him with lurking behind his eyes, but knows that today he’ll keep his tongue, however sorely bitten.

As if in acknowledgement to this, Severus smirks at him. He won’t mention the nightmares, the tears, the shocking part of Potter that comes completely undone by grief and pain. He imagines the boy soppy with his own piss, clawing at his bedroom door begging “please, please, please.” He can hear him now, howling for a mother he’d hardly had, like a slaughtered calf, so that it’s all Severus can do but clutch him to his chest, piss and all, and rock the struggling, sleepwalking, nightmare-bearing Potter until he finally awakens. Then Severus is free to drop him unceremoniously onto the floor and slam his bedroom door with a parting sneer and go back to a bed that will offer him no respite. It is the side of Potter that he loathes and treasures in equal measure but knows he will never tell of. Still, he gives Potter a look to let him know that he’s thinking of it.

Harry’s anger swells, and he has to think to remember what they were squabbling over. “Disregard your—you garbled a couple of instructions at and me and left me to work it out from a text book because you were drunk, so it was your fucking fault that—”

“Speak to me like that again, Potter, and you will be sorry.”

“Okay!” Mr Weasley says loudly with a clap of his hands. “I think it’s time for some food. Want to help me get the sandwiches from the kitchen, Harry?”

“And verbal abuse and accusation is all the gratitude I get for housing you, feeding you, not to mention the six outstanding N.E.W.T.s you obtained under my tutorage…” Snape drawls as Harry clambers to his feet.

“Yeah, and as if the Ministry doesn’t pay you handsomely for every one of those things,” Harry spits as he marches out of the room.

“Not enough, Potter, I assure you, not nearly enough,” Severus calls to him as he and Ron follow Arthur Weasley to the kitchen.

The smugness slides off Severus’s face as he looks to Minerva, and he has to stop himself from looking at his feet guiltily. He raises a haughty eyebrow instead and reaches to re-fill his glass.

In the kitchen, Harry catches Ron’s eye and grins.

“As if the Ministry doesn’t pay you handsomely,” Ron repeats and then tosses his head, flouncing towards a plate of sandwiches, and Harry laughs. “When did you get so melodramatic?” Ron asks as he takes a bite of a neat triangle of bread.

“I don’t know… It’s this house. It’s like the boredom reaches a fever pitch and we go nuts… You should have been here for the row when I blew up his laboratory. It spanned weeks and had actual battles. He wasted his whole stock of potions ingredients by trying to throw them at my head.” Harry laughs convincingly, and notes how easily he can retell the truth to make it sound normal, funny even.

Arthur looks at him over his spectacles with a mixture of concern and disapproval on his owlish face. Harry seems alright, happy enough. He looks healthier than when he’d left the Burrow last year, his body fleshed out, his eyes bright, but there was still something that left Arthur feeling not quite at ease about the boy’s demeanour.

“Don’t worry,” Harry tells him. “It’s only because we have an audience today. Most of the time it’s mutual ignoring and silent meal times, like we really are just two old ladies.”

Mr Weasley frowns, and picks up the plate of sandwiches, snatching them out of Ron’s reach before he can grab another.

“Well, you’d tell us if there was anything to worry about, wouldn’t you, Harry? You know we’re only a firecall away.”

“Thank you, Mr Weasley, but I’m fine, honestly.”

“And what was that about Severus drinking? You said he was drunk and– ”

“I only said that to wind him up,” Harry cuts in quickly. He pictures Snape half-dead in his armchair, again, bottles smashed around his feet and a glass still gripped in one hand, elegantly tipping liquid into the mix of glass and vomit, Harry crashing through it to pour a revival potion over thin blue lips. He remembers the feel of Snape’s neck slimy with cold sweat in his grip and the stench of alcohol strong enough to make Harry dizzy, Snape coming round just enough so that Harry can slap him, hard as he can, across his face. He shakes it away and smiles reassuringly.

“He got a bit tipsy once and I haven’t let him forget it.” He puts all his effort into an expression which he hopes says I’m happy, contented and nothing for you to worry about.

Mr Weasley smiles back, vaguely, and picks up another tray as he leaves the room.

“You know, people probably think that you two are a couple of old lezzers,” Ron tells him with a wise nod of his head.

 

**A Meet in the Street**

31st July 2000

 

The music soars, like it’s reached the crest of a wave and everyone on the crowded dance floor cheers.

“What?” Harry yells into the ear of the wizard hanging off his neck. Fabius doesn’t answer, just pulls a face and does a mime that Harry can’t understand and then presses his sweaty forehead into the crick of Harry’s neck, moving his hips to sway their bodies to the music. Harry feels like his heart is matching the beat, a steady boom-boom that rattles through his body and the ground and makes him feel connected to the universe. He thinks about trying to tell Fabius how he’s feeling but he knows he won’t be able to bellow it with any meaning over the swell of music. He wraps his arms around him instead, the dampness of their t-shirts sticking to the bare patches of each other’s skin.

He takes a swig of his brightly coloured drink. It had some funny name – Blue Paradise or something – and Harry didn’t really like it, but they were the most expensive cocktails and Fabius had insisted. “Blue Paradises for everyone!” Harry had roared to the pretty barmaid, waving his hand as the people around him, people that he didn’t quite know, who cheered and patted thanks onto his back. He’d watched her red-lipsticked mouth as she tried to tell him the price and then tipped a handful of Galleons out of his money bag.

“Keep the change,” he told her, waving away the coins she tried to press into his hand and she’d beamed at him once she’d understood.

 “I want to dance,” Fabius had shouted, hooking a proprietary arm around Harry’s shoulder and leading him away.

Now, many, many blue paradises later, and a small yellowish pill that Fabius had delivered into his mouth on his tongue, and a snort of powder that he sniffed from a key whilst locked in the men’s cubicle, the club they’re in feels like it is his heart. Lights swirl and trace, like ink splatters merging into one and Harry feels waves of something surging through him and out of him as he stands in the middle of the dance floor and watches Fabius dance.

~

Severus feels oddly exposed to be out so late at night in a house coat and woollen tights. His neck is sore from where some Wizard thug had tried to snatch his bag, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against an all too solid brick wall. The thug, having mistaken Severus as an easy target – disguised as he is as an elderly lady – wasn’t at all prepared for the magical assault Severus launched at him. For a moment Severus was soaring, the sweet taste of curses surging through his wand and the thrill of watching the man crumple before him… But all too soon he was wheezing and leaning his hand against a damp, dank wall to stop himself from toppling over and forcing himself to check that the man was still breathing. His heart hasn’t quite calmed down since and he’s scuttling down the road quickly, eager to get back to the apparition point a few roads over. Enough, he tells himself. Enough. No more standing around darkened streets trying to sell hits to deadbeats, no more procuring of ingredients from dank sour smelling doorways. He thought that once Bellatrix was gone (and she was, caught on some remote island, finally lured there by a Ministry trap and killed when she tried to escape), his life would begin again, but it seems to have less in it than before. He barely has the drive to get up and do anything other than scrape enough money to feed himself and keep him in good quality brandy. There is a dull thump reverberating through the pavement, and it takes Severus a little while to realise that it isn’t in fact coming from his heart or head, but is being emitted from a large building up ahead. The doorway is flanked by two surly looking wizards in black robes and sunglasses, and around the side is a noisy bunch of nearly naked youths puffing on cigarettes and cackling to each other.

Harry doesn’t know how much later it is when Fabius says that he’s too hot and wants to leave. The heat of the club instantly feels oppressive, and suddenly Harry can’t quite catch his breath. A shudder of panic ripples through him, and his euphoria pops like a bubble. He doesn’t want to be with all these people, doesn’t want to part of the gang Fabius is signalling to follow them – the girl who has chewed on her lips so much that they are swollen and sore looking, the clammy wizard that keeps looking at Harry. He’s not even sure he wants to leave with Fabius, and is about to make some excuse when he’s outside and the cool sweet air is in his face and everyone seems beautiful again. He exclaims at the beauty of the night sky and everyone laughs and he’s not entirely sure why, but Harry laughs too, loudly and freely. In the hubbub of his elation, he doesn’t recognise the familiar tugging, ripple of magic in amongst it, and then he sees someone across the street.

Severus is almost to the corner when a familiar laugh fills his ears, but he’s already sensed him anyway. He glances over his shoulder and sees Harry Potter falling out of the building where the thump of music is coming from. He’s got his arms around a slim dark wizard, and they are the centre of a noisy gaggle of others, all of whom look vaguely familiar. He hurries on as another laugh echoes around the street. He’s almost out of sight around the corner when there’s a shout and running feet are coming towards him.

Severus turns the corner and leans against the wall, out of sight from Potter’s companions. He pulls his face into a snarl and looks down at Harry.

“I knew it was you – it’s the posture,” Harry says with a grin and rakes his eyes over the fur hat perched on top of grey curls and the large handbag Snape has got clutched to him. “But–why are you out like this?”

Potter’s eyes seem impossibly large, he’s not wearing his spectacles and is chewing gum ravenously. Sweat has slicked his hair down and a few droplets are running down his face. He looks too vibrant, too alive and it makes Severus want to recoil from him. He looks at his mouth, working the gum, glad to have something to direct his look of disdain towards. He frowns, but Harry doesn’t notice, just keeps eyeing him with uncharacteristic earnestness, unsettling in how pleased he is to see him.

“Just a spot of business Potter, nothing for you to worry about. Or ask questions about.”

“Harry, come on!” someone shouts from behind the corner and Harry pokes his head around and waves to the group of youths now waiting by a Hackney carriage. Severus goes to walk on, but Harry clutches the sleeve of his overcoat, tugs it hard so that Snape swings around and for a moment they stumble against each other. Something leaps in Severus’s gut and he shoves Potter hard so that he falls against the wall, his head clunking against the bricks.

“Wait, what do you mean?” Harry asks, disregarding being knocked into the wall.

He’s still clutching the sleeve of Severus’s coat and looks puzzled, scared even and Severus grits his teeth and looks at the determined hand holding onto him. He sighs. “I’m not quite as comfortably off now that I’m not being paid to babysit you day-in, day-out.”

The concern on the boys face is so raw, almost painful to look at, and Severus wants to push him again, wants to slam him back against the wall until he stops looking at him like that. He shakes his arm free and clicks his tongue.

“I’m out buying certain supplies that come cheaper on a street corner than they do through Ministry approved avenues. Nothing terribly dark or sordid I assure you, so for Merlin’s sake take that look off your face.”

“Oh!” Harry says, and then he laughs. “Oh right. Well, I did wonder.” He beams again, and Severus’s hands itch to clutch him around the throat to choke out his odd cheer, his grating camaraderie.

He looks down at Harry, unsmiling and wonders what his expression would be if he were to see Severus as he really was: unshaven, unclean, stale alcohol on his breath.

“Harry!” someone yells again, impatiently.

“Don’t let me keep you,” Severus says and turns away, but Harry grabs the sleeve of his coat again.

“I err, I…” he stutters and Severus scowls at him. “Nice to see you, Snape,” he finishes and gives him a grin before letting go of his arm and running back to the group.

Severus peers around the corner after him and watches as he slings his arm over the impatient wizard, who reaches to kiss Harry’s cheek, a hand sliding up the back of Harry’s t-shirt.

Harry laughs and pulls Fabius around into a proper embrace, kissing him messily, his hands slipping into his robes and Severus disapparates from where he is standing.

 

His house is as dark and as empty as he knew it would be. His nerves feel alive, the blood pumping uncomfortably through his veins and he heads straight for the liquor cabinet. He can feel the polyjuice potion wearing off as he takes a glug of fire whisky straight from the bottle. Standing by the sideboard, he glares around the room, as if he can blame it all on its stupid hollow orderliness. Maybe in some ways he can. Right now he hates it, hates the stupid sideboard, the fireplace he’d so artfully transfigured from where he’d lain in his make-do sick bed. He should have left it how it was, memories lurking in every mouldy corner, so bitter they made his eyes sting. He’d been a fool to think he could start again, to think that there was anything other than his old festering self that could thrive here. Another gulp of whisky and he’s surprised to find he’s already drunk half the bottle. The only effect seems to be that the voices in his head are louder and angrier, and he gnashes his teeth and slams the bottle down so hard it jolts his wrist. The feeling is not unpleasant. On the side is a candelabra, a lonely burnt down wick standing in its arch. He lifts it and slams it against the sideboard, plucking his firewhisky to safety first. He smacks it down again, again, again, until the pathetic thing snaps in his hand. Sweeping around, he eyes the rest of the room and sets to work breaking everything he can lay his hands on, making odd animal growls and snarls as he claws into the upholstery of the sofa.

He smashes the photo of his younger self and his mother, the only image he has on display of her. He doesn’t know what Potter used to see in it, endlessly staring as he would into the expressionless faces. Fuck the photo, fuck his mean dead mother, and fuck Harry fucking Potter. A new sweep of rage hurtles through Severus and he grabs the bottom of an arm chair to overturn it. It was _his_ fucking fault he’d come back, he who had tied him here when he could have had a chance, could have flown far away, but instead he’s stuck, stuck in the limbo of many pasts, all of which he wants never to think about again. But it’s all he’s got, all he’s got, all he’s got. And what does the Saviour get? Youth and freedom and the love of a whole world. And worse, the ability to keep all his damage to himself. It’s not the world’s Harry Potter who clawed as desperately as Severus did, who welcomed every punch, who clung around Severus’s neck and would not let himself be let go. But it is Severus Snape who slinks and hides in shadows, whose body drags eyes and looks and whispers onto it wherever he goes. He wrenches the door of the side cabinet off its hinges, slings it over his shoulder and pulls out a pile of magazines and newspapers, each one adorned with the Saviour’s smug, leering face. It was everywhere, everywhere, looming out at Severus through shop windows and billboards, dangling his normalcy, his safe pleasant smile, a constant reminder that it is Severus who must suffer, and Severus alone. He claws at the faces on the magazines, driving his nails in. It takes a long time, but eventually all that is left is shredded paper, the odd piece of Harry’s glasses, the curve of his jaw peeking out amongst the snarled up chunks of newspaper.

Severus is on his knees, exhausted. He looks down to see he’s still in his housecoat, the legs of his tights laddered and blotting up blood, the polka dot hem of his smock peeping out around his legs. He pictures himself, in drag, wild eyed and covered in blood and lets out a sudden bark of laughter that is so forceful it scares him. Looking around the debris of what was once his sitting room, Severus knows that he doesn’t have it in him to rebuild it, not again. With none of his grace, he scrambles upright, shaking himself out of his ridiculous attire and running up the stairs naked. He feels wild. He feels free. He is terrified. Up in his room he sees himself in the mirror by his dressing table, eyes bulging, hair almost on end, blood congealing around his mouth. He stares panting at himself, wondering who it is he is looking at, and then forces himself to turn away, rushing to his wardrobe and pulling armfuls of black cloth from inside. He puts layer upon layer on, unfeeling any temperature, hot or cold.

Once dressed he flees back down the stairs, grabbing a cloak so clumsily that he knocks down the stand. He steps out of his way and says, “That’ll teach you,” to nothing, to nobody. He pats down his pockets and laughs when he realises he doesn’t have his wand on him. Back in the living room he fishes his housecoat out of the broken wood and shredded feathers and plucks his wand from the pocket. Halfway out of the room, he suddenly sweeps back around, heading to the liquor cabinet, its door now smashed off and lying on the floor. “Aha!” he exclaims as his hands grope at the un-smashed bottles still lining the shelves. Pointing his wand, he shrinks all of them in one go, and stuffs them into his inside pocket. He dusts his hands with the air of a man congratulating himself on a job well done, and bounds to the front door in wide proud strides. Severus Snape steps out into the night, the door banging against the wall of the inside hallway. He doesn’t even bother turning back to close it.

~

Harry opens his eyes and the room lurches. Daylight is coming in through a large window in a room he does not recognise. Music is playing, something tinny and jarring and there are bodies curled up in armchairs and sofas in what looks like an expensive flat. He thinks he can make out the legs of someone passed out on the floor. Fabius’s feet are on his lap, his body stretching out on the sofa they’re collapsed on, his head dangling off the edge. It looks uncomfortable and Harry thinks about moving him, but his body can’t get up. He feels worse than death. His evening stretches out blurrily in his mind. The club, the dancing, and something else… Snape. He’d seen Snape. He squints hard and tries to remember what had happened, but can only picture Snape snarling at him from behind his old lady veneer, and trying to hurry off. If it’s possible, Harry feels even worse. Months he’d been looking out for a glimpse of the man, scanning every Ministry event, every memorial gathering, even keeping his eyes peeled when he was out in Diagon Ally or Hogsmeade. He’d known he was never there, he could tell by absence of prickly magic that told him when Snape was close by. All those times when Harry had looked so smart in his dress robes, or been giving moving speeches to hundreds of people, or had just been hanging out looking cool with other celebrities, and Snape has to bump into him when he’s off his face and sweating and most likely talking nonsense. Probably acted like a right idiot, he thinks and groans loud enough for Fabius to stir and raise a sickly looking face towards him. Harry pats his legs apologetically and leans his head back on the sofa. Never mind, he tells himself. Snape must have at least heard of his success even if he’d never been present to witness it first hand. He must know about all the good work Harry was doing, all the charity events he’d set up, they were publicised well enough. And at least he wasn’t on his own, not like Snape was. Appreciatively Harry smiles down at Fabius, who sits up suddenly.

“Oh god, I think I’m going to throw up,” he says, and scrambles off the sofa.

 

 

**Havens**

 

31st July 2001

 

Harry looks at Torron’s disgruntled face and tries to remember why he used to think him so beautiful. He watches him eyeing the menu with disdain and sighs, deciding to not get involved. He looks out across the balcony, down to the large swimming pool that is already being occupied by holiday makers. Harry watches as a plump woman in a rose printed swimming costume eases her way down the steps, her sigh as the cool water envelops her is almost audible to him so far away.

“Mister Potter?” Harry looks around to find, to his surprise, a line of hotel staff carrying bundles of gifts, flowers, and bouquets of balloons. He’d thought that a holiday on the other side of the world in what was supposed to be a secret location would have stopped all this. Torron looks instantly happier though, and Harry directs it all to be sent to their suite.

After breakfast he sits on the bed to open the pile of letters and cards whilst Torron rips the paper off each present and announces what it is.

“Underpants… more underpants. Oooh, _silk_ underpants.”

Harry nods as he reads thanks and requests - _Dear Mister Harry Potter, Happy Birthday, thank you for saving us from evil…_

“More chocolates, these ones better I think.”

_If it was no trouble, I was wondering if you could send a signed photograph of yourself…_

“Schiesse, a crappy picture of you that looks like it was drawn by a two year old… Why bother I wonder.”

Harry gets bored after opening the third letter, which word for word almost reads exactly the same as the last two, when he spies an envelope with familiar loopy writing.

“ _Dear Harry,_

_Happy Birthday! Hope you and Torron are enjoying the sun, we all miss you lots. We have great news, I was hoping to tell you in person, but as we haven’t seen you… Anyway, guess what? I’m pregnant! We’re expecting a little girl in October, and we want you to be godfather!_

_Ron says hello. Hope we get a chance to catch up some point this year, lots of love Hermione_.”

“Ooh look Harry, a gold necklace. Real I think. Yes, it seems real. So pretty!”

There’s another piece of paper in the same envelope and Harry pulls it out and unfolds it. On it is a drawing of himself, a large head with glasses and a scar, his arms and legs coming straight out of it. In one hand he is holding a wand, his other his holding the hand of a smaller head. Inside are some scribbles and _Love you from Teddy_ in Hermione’s writing. A wave of homesickness, although it’s more than that, more like life sickness, leaps to Harry’s throat and he scrabbles for a quill and parchment from the desk top, but then Torron calls his name.

“Harry,” he says in a breathless whisper, and Harry looks up to find him lying on the floor, the gold chain hanging across his bare chest, the silk black boxer shorts snug around his thighs, and a large red ribbon tied around his stomach.

“I think you should be the one to unwrap _this_ gift,” he says and bats his eyelashes.

Even though Torron misses sexy by a couple of hundred suggestive smirks, Harry feels the start of arousal despite himself

Torron runs a slow tongue over his lips. “Come and get your birthday present, Harry,” he purrs and Harry finds himself sliding off the bed towards him, a hand reaching out to untie the ribbon. Still, even as Harry slides a hand into the silk boxer shorts, he’s nudged by an ever growing seed of annoyance in his mind that Torron, who is always so willing to have everything paid for yet always so willing to be dissatisfied, genuinely believes a ribbon around his body suffices as his only gift for Harry on his birthday.

~

Severus washes in the chipped sink of his small room and pulls on his new-old robes, the black cotton softened and greyed with age. In the mirror, he looks at the newly embroidered name on the breast of his cloak: Evan, the name that had come out instead of his own when he’d been asked. Evan Prince, a man with no past. He looks at his face in the mirror, no longer sallow and pale, and pulls a comb through his long hair. When he is done, he casts himself with a minor disillusionment charm so that none of his house-mates will be able to place where they have seen his face before. The wooden door to his room scrapes along the tiled floor as he pulls it open and makes his way down a bare stone hallway. The communal kitchen is quiet and empty as Severus downs a cup of strong black coffee, the other inhabitants not up with the sun as he is. He likes the mornings best, when the air is cool and crisp and the dew gathers in droplets on the hem of his robe as he makes his way out into the garden. Birds are chattering in the trees and he gives them a nod of hello as he picks up his spade. The metal handle feels cool in his hands, now roughened and blistered from long days working outside. He surveys his section of the grounds, ‘Evan’s Bit’, as the others had started calling it. At first it had only been a small corner, a few feet by a few feet, but when the rest saw how hard he worked, how quickly the scraggy piece of land could be turned into neat little rows of herbs, seedlings that are now flourishing, they left him to it. Now he has finished the herb garden and a large plot growing magical plants, and is currently working on a vegetable patch.

By nine o’clock some of the others are out in the garden too, they nod to Severus – Evan – as they make their way towards their own work. After two weeks of being here everyone seems to understand that he likes to keep himself to himself, and for the main they keep away.

When Severus doesn’t stop for a break with the others at eleven, Ailfrid, the man who had plucked him drunk from a gutter two weeks before, brings him a cup of mint tea, a bottle of water and a small teacake. He stands with Severus until he has drunk the tea, and eaten the teacake, without saying a word, then leaves him to his work with a pat on his elbow.

~

Harry watches Torron sleeping in the dull light of their room. Even in sleep, his mouth forms a pout, a supercilious, discontented expression that doesn’t ever seem to leave his face. Harry can almost see him tossing his head in his sleep indignantly. His skin looks soft though, soft like marble and he imagines it will be cool to his touch. He doesn’t dare though, knowing better than to interrupt Torron’s sleep. He rolls over, wide awake even though they’ve had another long day of ‘sun, sea and sex’ as Torron keeps calling it – an irritating, clichéd description of their holiday that makes Harry clench his jaw every time it is repeated. After another twenty minutes or so of no sleep, Harry tiptoes out the door, shutting it slowly and quietly behind him. He finds himself on the beach, lying back on the sand and looking up at the stars. He feels bored and mushy headed, like everything has slid into a glutinous dirge, like he’s lost all his sharpness. He thinks of long pointy Snape with his quick retorts and feels an uncomfortable pang of nostalgia, regret. He wonders what he’s doing now, imagines him sat up in his armchair reading from a heavy book, brandy in his hand, sarky comment sliding from his lips and Harry sat loudly about trying to get a sliver of attention. His magic crackles at the thought of Severus touching him and he begins to shake. The night sky suddenly seems too big, too vast and Harry wants to hide away from it. The air in his chest suddenly feels leaden, unmovable and he grips at the sand as panic flushes through his mind.

~

Severus is the only one who goes back to work after dinner. He eats his vegetable stew mutely, flanked by Ailfrid on one side and a thin silent man on the other. He only half listens to the talk, discussion of the rounds they will run to deliver their crops to those in need of more food, potions and medicine to those who are sick. Those who are not going on rounds will sit by the fire outside smoking, or around the kitchen table, but not Severus. Severus will carry on working in the small outside shed, brewing draughts and tinctures, and tonics that will be handed out in the local community free of charge, to Muggle and wizards alike. This work satisfies him, as it always has done, and he saves it for the evenings when he is too physically tired to dig or lug the heavy cans of water for his plants.

There’s a dull, satisfying ache in all his limbs and he can taste the salt on his lips from where his earlier sweat has dried. This place, the Haven as it’s called, offers him everything he needs; not only the back aching work that leaves him gasping for breath, but work that has given him something he has lacked for too long. Here, those that are magical work unknown alongside those that aren’t, and magic and mysticism and Muggle folklore are all mixed up to create a new sort of magic, one that reaches in to Severus’s chest and eases his sore heart. Of course, he has contempt for a lot of them: those that seem to wander about in merry dazes, that don’t seem to feel the urgency of their work, those that are not seeking the absolution that he is. But he manages to keep his scorn to his internal dialogue, barely scowling at the tinkles of laughter and the self-satisfied rubbing of egos. He is silent, watchful as they perform their kindness as if it is an act to be seen and applauded for, not as necessity, not with deep intent, not as the desperate lifeline he feels it to be. Sometimes they get candles out and stand in circles chanting pointlessly and waving their bodies in dance, false ecstasy etched on their faces and Severus tucks himself in with his potions, safe with his work and his anger at their flaunted freedom.

Later, when it is very dark and everything has become quite and still outside, Ailfrid knocks on the door.

“Enough work for today Evan,” he says, and Severus nods. Ailfrid waits just outside the hut for Severus to pack away his ingredients and put out the flames underneath the cauldrons.

They walk in silence to the fire where there are still a couple of people left sat around it. Hazel, an elderly stout woman whose long grey hair goes into plaits either side of her face (and who Severus suspects is a witch), is sat smoking from a large pipe. Usually she is talking, telling them fantastical stories, but today she seems sombre, though she gives Severus a smile and an approving nod as he sits down next to her on the wooden bench. There’s another old man, bald with a long white moustache who is usually found sat on an ornate wooden bench at the fire area. Ailfrid joins them and they sit watching the flames lick and curl around the pieces of wood, the heat of the embers stinging Severus’s tired eyes. His thoughts drifting, Severus thinks about Spinner’s End, his home, and whether he should go back there soon. But the idea twists his insides; the thought of being alone amongst his ruined heirlooms, drunk and bitter. Hazel starts singing a song, in Gaelic, he presumes, the words sad and sweet rising with the heat of the fire. He has nothing to go back for anyway, his house will be as bare as it always has been. Something pinches at him, hard and sharp and insistent, but Severus does not let the feeling form. He sits watching the fire until Ailfrid taps him on the shoulder and tells him it’s time to go to bed.

~

Back inside with the comforting whirr of the air conditioning and Torron’s heavy breathing, Harry lies down on the bed and feels the sheen of sweat coating his body begin to cool.

Torron stirs. “Bad dream?” he asks, keeping his eyes closed but flopping a lazy arm over Harry’s torso.

“Yeah,” Harry breathes.

“Baby you’re shaking,” Torron says, and gets up so he can drape his body over Harry’s, flopping an arm around his neck and laying his head over Harry’s pulsing heart. Harry pulls Torron tight against him, soothes himself by stroking his hair and his warm back, bending to place kisses on the top of his head. It takes him a long time to fall asleep and when he does, he dreams he’s back in Hogwarts, stalking the corridors at night, alone in his pyjamas. He’s hunting his own shadow with a torch, chasing it up spiral staircases to the astronomy tower and jumping off, landing on his feet back inside the maze of corridors. His shadow leads him down and down along murky corridors into the bowels of the castle, until he reaches the dungeons and it splits in two.

 

 

**Flown Home**

 

31st July 2002

 

Cloud particles rush at Harry’s face like tiny pricks of ice. He’s not sure if his glasses have steamed up, or if it is the rum he’s drunk that has made everything so blurry. He squints out at the stars, fuzzily wondering why they are hurtling towards him before he realises that it is the street lights of the M3 and he is crashing towards them. He pulls his broom up, sending himself into several stomach lurching loop-the-loops before he can straighten himself out and regain his course. Luckily, the route to his destination is firmly etched in his brain, no matter how drink addled. He can feel it pulling him towards it like the niggling magnet it had been for the past few years. Snape, Snape, Snape, his mind repeats over and over like an encouraging chant in his head.

He was too lost to question it, too consumed to bother properly with reason, but tonight something had broken in Harry and he didn’t know how to fix, if it could be fixed even.

It was his birthday party, an elegant ballroom filled with round tables and people he didn’t know. Hermione and Ron had been there, but he’d barely had the chance to say “Hello,” before he’d been accosted by people he didn’t know who’d one after another grabbed at his arm to have their photo taken with him. He’d finally wriggled out of someone’s clutch, a flash bulb repeating in his eyes as he hurried towards the exit. There he’d been told that Mr and Mrs Weasley had said to pass on their goodbyes and that they’d left a gift on the table with the others. Harry had nodded and looked back at the room, all the glittering chandeliers, the ongoing flashes of cameras, the sea of laughing faces and it had all suddenly swung violently out of focus.

“Are you alright, Sir?” the doorman had asked, reaching out a black gloved hand to Harry’s elbow. Harry let it catch him and then looked down at it curled around his arm and was suddenly filled with terror. He struggled free and rushed around a corridor and into the first door he could find. Inside was a rack of cloaks and clothes and a long desk facing a dirty mirror. Harry placed his hands on the desk and looked at himself in the mirror. Sweat was pouring down his face and he looked pale. His eyes were bloodshot and his arms trembled with the weight of him. He was just preparing himself to apparate home when Vadim had burst in and started trying to pull him back to the throngs of people in the ballroom.

“But it’s your birthday! Your guests are waiting and you’re embarrassing me!”

He’d tried to explain but Vadim wouldn’t listen and then Harry had him by his throat against the wall. He’d held on until he’d registered Vadim’s bulging eyes, then let him go with a flurry of apologies, but by that point Vadim was too livid to reason with and had screeched admonishments and threats into Harry’s face until he could take no more.

“I’ll tell them everything!” was the last thing he heard as he turned on his heel and disapparated. He’d barely landed on his garden lawn before he cracked back to the small dressing room.

Vadim looked at him slyly. “Knew you wouldn’t leave me.”

Harry had raised his wand and muttered _Obliviate_. He’d gone back home and sat against his front door crying, heaving big lungfuls of air that came back out in horrible wails. Then he’d gone inside and picked up his broom.

 

The only thought that has given him any sort of comfort since is Spinner’s End. As he flies through the night, a whispered memory of Dumbledore’s voice speaks to him telling him about bonds forged and life debts. Harry curls them around him and Snape, curls them around the feelings sweeping at his heart. Loyalty and envy, love and betrayal…

In the first days of the aftermath of the war, when Voldemort was really dead and Snape was really alive, and the Wizarding world was in a strange limbo between celebration and mourning, Harry had donned his invisibility cloak and hunted out Spinner’s End. It wasn’t certain then, that Bellatrix was after him, that it was Harry she was on the rampage for. She’d blown up Snape’s house, but he’d still been in the hospital. Long days Harry had spent standing across the street trying to imagine himself ringing the bell, or else he’d circled above, flying high until the dark house became a little speck. He’d flown there over and over again, slipping out of the Burrow undetected to fly guard over the house like an invisible sentry. In rain, and cold, and fog, he’d found it, the magic from it rippling through him like nowhere else he’d ever been. He’d wondered if Snape had sensed his presence, felt the same pull in his gut. Harry had been able to make his eyes look in a certain way, could make all his thoughts of Snape come right to the forefront of his mind and he’d been able to see the house as it really was before him. Sometimes it was like he could see through the walls, and flickers of Snape would appear. Leaning against the counter in his kitchen whilst he waits for something to boil. Draped on his sofa, cigarette dangling off his fingers. Sometimes Harry had seen him slowly walking in an upstairs room, a limping pace from corner to corner, hanging in the sky like a floating television screen.

He thinks of Snape alone, uncelebrated, unseen. Spinner’s End unplottable, the mix of loathing and admiration whispered by the Wizarding world about an invisible man, once thought dead, one Harry can’t quite look at straight on, but can’t unsee.  Tonight, he was going to tell him, tell him it all – that he can’t take a breath without the feeling that Severus’s lungs are filling up beside him, that the only thing that can calm him when he wakes up terrified is picturing Snape’s face, sitting in a chair by his bedside looking at him blankly. That ever since he’d held Snape in the Shrieking Shack and begged for him to not be dead, he’d felt that Snape was with him, inside him, everywhere he went, how he’d stretched back into Harry’s history to become a figure that had always, always been there. He was sure that Snape couldn’t feel anything that came close to what it was like when they were together. He’d tell him that he didn’t mind Snape hating him, that he didn’t care what happened, that he would never leave him on his own again. He knew now he had something to honour, their lives, entwined always, Snape’s brutal existence, it could all be put right, Harry knew it could.

~

From his armchair Severus passes a bottle of mead, the contents glowing amber in the firelight across the room, to fill up any empty glasses. Hazel laughs at something, the sound rich and warm to Severus’s ears and he takes a long drag of the ornate pipe he’s holding. To his right two Muggle witches – as he calls them, both without any magic like his own, but both with odd healing powers the like of which he’s never come across before – are feeding scraps from their plates to the two mangy stray cats that seem to have taken residence in his sitting room. Tacitus, the mute man that has started staying at Spinner’s End more often than not raises his refilled glass of mead in Severus’s direction and smiles. Severus smiles back and tries to ignore the niggle in his magic, an odd feeling that seems to ruffle the hairs on his body. He puts it down to the new feeling that comes with having company around him and starts talking to Hazel about what she should do about an infestation of fruit worms on the cherry trees.

~

Lost in thought Harry flies too far East and has to circle a large park for several minutes until he figures out which way he came from and doubles back on himself. Soon after he is flying over the familiar streets of a familiar little town, and then there it is, Spinner’s End looking empty and unlived in as always, and Harry is so happy to see it that he forgets to slow down in time and comes to a crash landing against the old wooden door of Snape’s house with a sickly sounding crack.

Something hits the front of the house with such force that Hazel spills her mead and Tacitus grips the arm of his chair tightly.

“Wait here,” Severus says, already halfway out the sitting room door.

When the door is whipped open Harry is lying in a crumpled mess. He squints at Severus and tries to wave an apologetic hand towards the crack in the door and the splinters of broom that are now littering the front stoop. He tries to speak but the shock and booze and the relief of being back at Spinner’s End turn his carefully thought out opening words to garbled incoherence which he splutters at Snape’s feet. Severus looks down at him, eyeing the scene in speechless confusion.

“Everything alright out there, Evan?” a voice from inside asks.

“Yes. Just a-” He looks at Harry with narrowed eyes as if he’s trying to figure out what he should call him. “Just a visitor.”

“Is he okay?” A head peers over Snape’s shoulder and Harry peers back. Another voice comes from inside and the head tells it that it’s just a visitor, and becoming aware of himself, Harry scrabbles up to his feet.

“Sorry… visitor…” he says and gestures to himself and the shards of his broom. “I sorry, I-” but he’s cut short by lights dancing before his eyes. His knees buckle, and suddenly he’s being caught. Arms come around his shoulders, and his face is pressed into darkness as Severus grasps at the boy to stop him falling, pulling him into a clumsy embrace. He flops his head over Snape’s shoulder as another head appears before the first head, and Harry briefly wonders if he’s hallucinating them, these floating heads, but then Snape sees them too, because he says something and they disappear.

Now Harry is being completely lifted and the house is passing him by, the severe looking portraits eye him as he’s carried up the stairs and Harry feels more like a little boy than he ever has done in his whole entire life.

Snape carries him into his old room, depositing him on the bed and muttering something that lights the gas lamps. Then, as a loss at what else to do, he starts untying the laces of Harry’s trainers. Harry watches him, comforted by the sight of his precise deliberate movements, moving his foot as Snape takes the heel in his hand to slip his foot out of it. When he’s done he moves to leave the room.

“Snape wait, I…”

“Your clothes are wet, I’ll get you a nightshirt. You are staying the night I presume?”

All Harry can do is nod mutely, and as he hears Snape climb the stairs to his own quarters he starts untying the cord of his cloak.

When Snape returns holding a neatly folded black garment, Harry is already half undressed. The room smells strongly of alcohol and dampness and something that always seems to linger on Potter. Severus doesn’t quite look at him, placing the shirt on the chair by his bed and muttering about his guests. He closes the door behind himself and Harry pulls the shirt over his head. He looks around the room, same as how he’d left it, even with the tattered Quidditch poster pinned to the wardrobe door, but he doesn’t feel like he’s home. It’s all gone wrong, Snape was supposed to be rude and hostile, Harry was supposed to be calm and patient and tell Snape why they needed each other, in such a reasonable way that Snape would agree and then they could resume their lives as if Harry hadn’t left. Then they could go back to intermittent civility interrupted by the occasional bloom of glorious violence.

And now he’s been put to bed like an embarrassing teenager who has drunk more than he can handle. Glumly, he supposes that that isn’t too far off the mark. The phrase ‘just a visitor’ repeats in his mind as he climbs beneath the blankets. Before long he can hear music and, most bizarrely, laughter, floating up the stairs and Harry decides that he hates all of Snape’s _guests_ , whoever the hell they were.

 

Before he re-enters the sitting room, Severus clears his countenance and enters with a smile.

“An old acquaintance,” he says to the room at large. “Had too much to drink, needed a place to stay. He’s in bed now.”

People smile at him, nodding understanding and start talking again. Another record is put on the grammar phone and it is like Harry Potter has not just crashed back into his life.

“Always taking in waifs and strays, aren’t you Evan?” one of the Muggle witches tells him – Moonbeam he thinks she’s called, or something else silly. He smiles, a little curtly, and sits himself down next to Hazel.

She waits until everyone else is absorbed in conversation before she mutters, “Was that who I think it was?”

Severus stiffens and Hazel chuckles and pats his leg. “You keep your secrets deary, have no fear of me. But Evan Prince? I’ll bet my long pointy hat that that’s not your real name, and I’ll bet my favourite broom I know what it is. But don’t worry pet,” she adds, seeing the flicker of alarm that flashes across Severus’s features. “You’ve earned the right to be whoever you want to be. You’re a good man, no mistaking, and anything you tell me or don’t tell me will never change that.”

She squeezes his hand and Severus forces himself to let her. When everyone but Tacitus has gone home, Severus clears the sitting room of glasses and plates and ashtrays, and turns the sofa into a comfy double bed, thinking to himself that it was for the best that he’d never offered away Potter’s quarters for him to stay in.

 

On his way upstairs, Severus hovers outside Potter’s room. He should probably go in to make sure the boy hasn’t drowned in his own vomit, but his instinct is to hurry up to bed. He decides on a compromise of creeping the door open an inch to make sure his unwelcome guest is still breathing, but as he does so a noisy yowl comes from around his ankles and he looks down to find the two strays weaving between his legs.

He curses them as they push the door further open, his hand only reaching to brush a tip of tail as they scuttle off into the darkness.

“Snape?” Harry’s sleepy voice asks from inside the gloom.

“The blasted cats,” he says, stepping into the room and just making out Potter sitting up in bed, rubbing one of the traitorous cat’s heads. “I’ll take them out.”

“No, it’s okay,” Harry tells him. “I don’t mind the company. Hello puss-puss,” he says and both the cats settle on him and begin purring loudly. “Are these _your_ cats?”

“No. …Well, sort of.” Even in the dark he can see the boy raise his eyebrows. “They just turned up.” Severus shrugs and finds himself sitting in the chair by the bedside. It was always easier to interact with Potter in dim, odd situations.

Harry eyes him from the bed. “What are their names?” he asks.

“They don’t have names as such. I call that one Scratchy,” he says, pointing at the bigger black one curled against Potter’s side, “And that one Bitey,” he indicates the smaller tabby that is perching on Potter’s thigh, “Because that’s what they did when I tried to put them out.”

Harry laughs. “They seem alright to me,” he says, and wishes that he knew where he put his glasses so that he could see Snape better.

“That’s because you’re doing what they want you to do. You’ve fallen for their trap.”

Harry laughs again, and then it goes quiet.

“You were having a party,” Harry states, by way of keeping Snape from leaving.

“Not what you expected to find Potter?” Severus asks shrewdly. “Expected me to be crying into my brandy glass, miserable and alone and lamenting the loss of your company?”

“No, I just…” He trails off because they both know that that is exactly what he’d imagined he’d find. Well, not the lamenting his loss bit, but definitely miserable and alone.

“It must surprise you to know that there is life after Harry Potter after all.”

“I know that, of course I know that,” squawks Harry, and he tries to forget his deluded reasons for coming here.

“Do you? Then why may I ask have you deigned to give me time out of your precious celebrity lifestyle to come and visit me, on your birthday of all days? I expect you thought yourself very noble.” Snape’s lids are heavy and he looks tired, but his eyes shine in the darkness.

Harry clenches his jaw on the familiar annoyance at Snape’s reliable ability to see through him. Though not through him exactly; it always comes out slightly skewed in Snape’s words.

“Or was it all getting too much for you? Have you finally realised that magazine covers and big money endorsements are not everything you’d hoped it would be..? Have you become the sad clown? Do you cry behind the make-up?”

“Yeah, well, what would you know about it?” Harry spits, forcefully enough to startle the cats. The abrupt stop of their purring hikes up the tension. In the silence Severus looks at him, and licks his lips. Harry swallows. “I work mostly for charity and I love what I do.”

“Touched a nerve have I?” Severus drawls. “And what charity, may I ask, needs photos of you with your top off to help it serve the needy?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. The money all goes to charity, everything I make I give away.”

“Does it? Do you? Then what supports your high-flying lifestyle? The holidays, the clothes, the dazzling apartments ..?”

“It all gets paid for, people give me things.” Even Harry can hear how out of touch he sounds. “How come you know so much about it anyway?” he asks, by way of diversion.

“It’s hard not to know so much about it. Your face seems to be printed on anything that it will stick to.”

“It’s good that it’s out there, it’s a symbol of hope. My brand identity stands for-” He’s cut short by a cold trill of laughter.

“Your brand identity? Your _brand identity_? My oh my, Potter, it’s worse than I imagined. Lord, how they must have seen you coming.” Severus sinks back into the chair and places his hands so that the finger tips of each hand meet.

“You don’t know anything about it.” Harry’s stroking one of the cats so hard, that it climbs off him, flicking him a look of disdain before nimbly leaping across and landing on Severus.

“Your _brand identity_ ,” Severus says, absently scratching the back of the cat’s head, “Stands for nothing more than bright glistening galleon signs that line every fat cat’s pocket that you whore yourself out to.” He annunciates each word crisply.

“Whore myself out to? It isn’t like that, I choose what I want to do!” Which is a lie, Harry realises as soon as he says it– he’d long since let a team of management sort out his contracts. And the money side of things. “What about you then? What are you doing that makes you so holier than thou? Holding dinner parties and letting a couple of cats sleep in your house? Big fucking deal. You only have a problem with my success,” at this Severus scoffs happily, “Because it means I’m actually living, a concept that you’ve never quite managed to grasp.”

“I assure you there is nothing in your lifestyle that I could find worthy of envying, Potter. Selling my body for money is not what I call living.”

“Yes, well conveniently nobody wants your old sour body. What would you prefer me to do? Walk around sombrely? Only dress in black? Carry with me the weight of my past as if that could bring them all back? At least I can let go, can move on with my life.” Harry’s eyes are two blazing slits of green.

Unruffled, Severus continues petting the cat, slowly sliding his eyes away from Harry to look blankly, almost fondly, at the creature purring under his touch.

“Do not assume that you know me Potter, or what I choose to spend my time and efforts on.” Snape’s voice sounds bored, like he can’t even be bothered to sound menacing and Harry senses that the argument is winding down already.

“I know you alright. I know how you resent happiness and success in the rest of the world, I know how you think no-one else could possibly have suffered as much as Severus Snape, the world’s greatest martyr.”

Severus laughs hollowly, and stands, the cat landing by his feet with a light thud. He straightens his robes gracefully with a flick of his arms.

“Evidently you know absolutely nothing about me, as you never have and never will. Save your cod psychology for the simpletons that surround you, Potter. They may well have more use for it.”

Snape’s heading for the door, and Harry wants him to stay and finish rowing, wants it to topple into war. That’s what Harry came for. He scoffs and clicks his teeth as loudly as he can, but Snape’s firmly shutting the door.

In the hallway Severus smirks to himself, savouring the particular contentment of leaving Potter wanting. Upstairs though, as he curls into bed, he feels unsatisfied, empty. He thinks about wanking, but that’s not it, and he doesn’t think he could concentrate properly anyway.

Downstairs Harry is angry and sleepless, the throb of a hangover already pounding at his head, and his first night in years without anything to help him sleep to look forward to. “Fucking git,” he says.

~

It’s the creaking of the floorboards overhead that finally make Harry get out of bed – Snape’s not asleep either. He opens the door to his bedroom, and sneaks into the hall. He contemplates silencing his footsteps, but then decides that the element of surprise is probably not what the situation needs.

Severus hears the footsteps on the stairs, not the erratic thumps of Potter trying to crawl out of nightmare, but the deliberate tread of him coming towards him. He sits up and reaches for his wand from the bedside table, tucking it just out of sight under his thigh. Unconsciously he tucks his hair behind his ears and eyes the door, waiting.

Harry knocks on the closed door and holds his breath, but all there is is silence. “I know you’re awake,” he says, more confidently than he feels. More silence.

“Snape, I just want…Look, I’m coming in.” He fingers his wand in his pocket and slowly turns the door handle.

Snape’s eyes glint in the lack of light and Harry can’t really make out the rest of his face. He hadn’t thought about was going to happen once he was confronted with the man, poised in bed like a cornered wild cat.

Severus watches him move from one foot to the other, one hand still clutching the handle of the door, the other gripping his wand through the fabric of his nightshirt. He licks his lips in a way he knows unnerves Potter and doesn’t speak. If the fool was going to blunder up here, Severus certainly wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

“Please,” Harry says, quietly, a croak of a word, and Snape’s surprise shows in the briefest flash of his eyes.

“Please what, Potter? What is it exactly that you want from me at three-thirty in the morning,” his voice, that voice , the dangerous one, eats into Harry’s very breath and he doesn’t disguise his shudder.

“Please.”

Severus snarls and rises to his feet and Harry automatically takes a step backwards, but he’s not quick enough for Snape, who grabs him by a twist of nightshirt, pulling him forwards and then back against the door, using Harry’s weight to slam it shut.

“How many times must I tell you, Potter,” Snape hisses into his face, his body pressing against the hold he’s got on him so that his elbows dig at Harry’s stomach, “That I don’t have anything for you.”

“I know,” Harry gasps, and he starts squirming and one of Snape’s hands grabs his wrists, pinning one by his ear and pinching at the other with hard bony fingers. He slides his legs across the floor so that they trap Harry’s under pointy knees, their chests flush against each other.

He’s almost lost in Potter’s hot body against him, his interrogation sliding out of focus as Harry shudders and slips his hand out of Severus’s grip, only to grab at his hand, lacing the fingers and squeezing as hard as if he wants to break it.

“Then why did you come here?” Snape whispers it against Harry’s ear and it’s all Harry can do to keep himself wriggling, to keep Snape pushing against him.

“I just, I just,” he stammers, clawing for the words when all he can think about is Snape’s body, Snape’s breath. “I don’t feel anything.” He wriggles, and tries to push Snape away, glad when he can’t. “I can’t feel anything. I’m numb. I’m just so numb.” He’s practically sobbing.

Severus lets go of his wrist to jerk him forward by the shoulder and slam his head against the back of the door, and Harry kicks out hard in retaliation, hurting his toes as they jar against Snape’s bony shin. He grabs Potter by the throat and Harry in turn reaches to fist a handful of Snape’s hair, limiting his movement. Harry brings his knee up, but Snape kick his legs apart, repinning himself against the heat radiating out of the boy’s groin, so savagely that Harry stills. Their magic pulses together, pumping like it’s got its own heart, a heart they share, making it impossible to tell whose magic is whose.

“What do you want from me Potter,” Severus snaps his jaw by the boy’s ear, just stopping himself from snatching the lobe in his teeth.

 _This_ , Harry thinks. _Just this_.

Harry doesn’t know how long they struggle for, thumping against the door.

Eventually, Harry twists his neck back, trying to nudge Snape’s face out of the crook of his neck with his forehead. Severus lets his head be moved so that they are forehead to forehead, Snape’s nose pressing into Harry’s cheek, his eyes closed, sharing the breath they pant through their noses. Harry keeps butting with his head until Snape opens his eyes.

Harry’s eyes are too bright but Severus can’t get away from them. He grunts and squirms, but Harry’s still holding him by his hair, his gaze burning hot in Snape’s black eyes. Harry lets his body relax, eases his grip on Snape’s thigh and Snape sags. Harry doesn’t let go of his hair, and they stay like that, faces pressed together, breathing calming to a gentle brush on the other’s cheek, until Harry’s legs get too numb to hold him. He shifts and it’s over. Severus lets go and turns his back, swift grace returning as he swoops away. Less steadily, Harry slips out of the door and heads back to his room on shaky legs.

 

 

**Harry Day**

31st July 2003

 

Harry lets himself through the back door and grins at Snape, who, sat at the breakfast table stares at him with a spoonful of porridge halfway to his mouth.

“Morning,” Harry says brightly, and reaches down to stroke the cats who circle at his ankles. “Hello, did you miss me?”

“No they didn’t, and, but—it’s your birthday!”

“I know.”

“Then—what are you doing here?”

“No-one should spend the holidays alone.”

“Stop saying that! It’s not a holiday, and nor am I alone!”

“Oh, is Tacitus here? Well, then you and Tacitus shouldn’t spend the holidays alone.”

“But it’s not a holiday!”

“Well, actually—”.

“As if having you traipse in all year on the excuse of Christmas and Easter and bloody May Day isn’t enough. And what ever made up Muggle holidays you so claim. What’s this now, bloody Harry Potter Day.”

“Well actually…” He grins apologetically as Snape gapes at him. “Oh try not to look so outraged, even you could find something in my existence to celebrate.”

Snape shakes his head so vigorously that Harry has to laugh.

“Well, regardless of your opinion, as of today the 31st of July is now officially Harry Potter Day.” He grins as Snape splutters at him. “I don’t know why you have to get all indignant – there would be a Snape day if only you wouldn’t be so bloody prim about it all.”

“Prim? Parading about in fickle adoration is something my wellbeing does not require. Some of us have less need for hero worship than others, Potter.”

“Do they? Evan Prince seems pretty popular in some circles. What do they call you – the Silent Hero? The Quiet Saint?”

“Other people’s admiration has nothing to do with me.”

“Nor me.”

Severus laughs, cold and hollow. “Then what is that drives you to flaunt yourself in your underwear at every available opportunity? What was the latest article called, ‘Harry Potter takes his clothes of again, in case you didn’t see it the other five hundred times’?”

“I’m glad you’re still keeping up with my press cuttings,” Harry says in tone meant to indicate his boredom with this particular and constant line of argument. “And if you’d bothered to read it properly, you would have seen that that photo shoot was for a really good charity and – ”

Severus laughs louder this time, a savage bark that stops Harry midsentence.

“Funny how or your charity work seems to involve the world telling you how great you look. Though I suppose if it’s all you can offer…”

“Fuck you,” Harry spits and Snape instantly becomes more poised, calmly sneering down his nose.

When Tacitus pushes open the kitchen door he finds them standing close to each other, glaring at each other’s faces so intensely that he feels like he’s interrupting. He watches them, both so alive and strong, an aura of magic and something else he doesn’t have a name for beaming out of them and filling all the available space around them. He smiles to himself, glad to see the spark that lights Evan up like nothing else, and pauses to let their row sparkle for a little longer before he clears his throat and offers Harry a roughly wrapped gift.

 

The day continues as it always does whenever the three of them spend time together – Harry and Evan (Tacitus knows now who Evan really is, but dislikes the name Severus), both being exceedingly polite to him whilst bickering and sniping at each other like there isn’t anyone else but the two of them in the world. Despite it being _his_ birthday, Harry lays on a gourmet picnic lunch in a secluded park, grabbing Snape and Tacitus before there’s room for argument and apparating them to where a chequered blanket is already laid out.

Tacitus watches Evan take in the scene, sees him eye the spread of all his favourite foods – a wild game terrine, a broad selection of cheeses, chutneys in little neat jars, but he doesn’t say anything as he sits down, just huffs noisily as he reclines on the blanket, like all this is a great inconvenience to his busy day.

Tacitus watches Harry too, who doesn’t blanch at Evan’s rudeness, just sits down happily and starts pouring out wine from a crystal decanter. Somewhere there is music playing, a soft concerto that seems to come from the breeze itself. Tacitus taps Harry with his foot and gives him two thumbs up as he sits down. Harry grins back and starts fussing over finding a plate for Evan.

“Haven’t you got anything better to do then waste money on lavish lunches? It’s your birthday after all, aren’t there throngs of Harry Potter fans itching to celebrate with you?”

“There might be,” Harry says shrugging. “I don’t really care if there are.”

“Oh, finally realised that all those hangers on were only in it for the free ride have you? About bloody time, I’ve been telling you for years.”

Harry rolls his eyes.

“If you must know, I’ve got to do some Ministry stuff for Harry Potter Day.” Be the head of a large procession actually, and then light the first firework of an enormous display, but there was no way he was going to be the one telling Snape that, “And then I’m going to Hermione and Ron’s tonight. We’re having some of the old crowd over. I’d invite you to come but I know you’ll only say no.”

Snape laughs coldly. “I see enough of you Potter, why would I endure any more than I had to?”

Harry shrugs and takes a bite of a pork pie. “Suit yourself.”

When Evan finally drinks enough wine to allow himself to relax, although probably only noticeable to Tacitus and Harry who are both experts in his body language, Tacitus stands, indicating with his fingers that he’s going for a walk. He leaves Evan sat leaning back on his elbows, his long legs stretched out, a glass of wine in his hand and besides him Harry lying in the exact same position.

 

The park is lovely, quiet except for the music, and the expanse of grass they’re picnicking on bordered by tall delphiniums and the odd beauty of lupin leaves growing out into the sun, behind which a wood of beech trees towers. Tacitus’s path takes him around neat flower beds and down a slope, where the music is getting louder. He almost jumps when he rounds the corner at the bottom of the park and comes across a small bandstand. It is old in style, delicate twists of metal folded around its arches, and inside is a small orchestra, all immaculately dressed in black and white dress robes. He walks towards them at end of their concerto, flopping on the grass, a singular audience, as the last notes are played out. He smiles at the musicians, who smile back and nod as they take sips of water and turn over sheets of music. When they start to play again, the music is slower, sweetly sad. Tacitus stretches out and closes his eyes, the sun warm on his face, the music sweeping over him. Poor Evan, he thinks. Unable to see that this is love he is being shown, love he is being offered, love he is continuing to bat away like it was nothing more than an irritating fly trying to land on his skin.

Tacitus dozes for bit, not sure if he’s fallen asleep properly but aware that the light has changed when he opens his eyes. He waves a farewell hand at the bandstand and heads back up the slope. He can hear their raised voices as he approaches and stops behind a bush of white flowers, waiting so he won’t interrupt.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Harry was saying, his voice high with exasperation.

“Pleased? About what exactly, that you’re going from tarting around in front of a camera, to tarting about on a broom?” Evan’s voice is quiet, free of emotion, cold, and Tacitus can picture the hardness in his face.

“But you’ve been going on and on at me about not having a proper career, at least I’ll be doing something.”

“Yes but a career in sport, Potter. _Sport_. Why in the name of the sweet lord I bothered wasting ten months of my life tutoring you I’ll never know.”

“Don’t say that, it wasn’t a waste,”

Tacitus sighs and chews on his lip, and waits a bit longer behind the flowers.

“And what would you rather I did? You won’t let me come and help at the Haven, you won’t even let me give any money towards it.”

“The Haven does not need the benefit of any of your grubby ill-gotten gains. It’s run on something better than merchandise.”

“You make me sound like I’m a criminal. I can’t help being Harry Potter you know, I didn’t ask for this.”

“Oh be quiet Potter, you sound like a whiny fifteen year old.”

“Well, you never answered my question. What do you think I should do?”

“I honestly couldn’t give a rat’s arse what you choose to waste your efforts on. And nor do I know why you seem to think I should. It makes no difference to me.”

“Then why can’t you just say ‘well done’ then. Or ‘congratulations’?”

“Because I don’t see that there’s anything that you’ve done well or should be congratulated on, as I thought I’d spelled out. If it didn’t quite register the first few times, I’ll make myself clearer – Quidditch is an entirely fanciful waste of time and energy and anyone who invests time either playing it or watching it can only be assumed to be completely imbecilic.”

Tacitus hears Harry huff, the clink of china plates knocking together.

“I don’t know why I bother telling you anything.”

“Nor do I, I assure you. I suggest you do us both a favour and stop.”

Tacitus emerges from his bush smiling benignly, and sits across the rug opposite them, nodding ‘yes’ as Harry offers him wine. The mood doesn’t get any better, both Evan and Harry neither talking nor looking at each other. Eventually, Harry rises to his feet, dusting his robes of crumbs and grass.

“I’ve got to go, things to do. See you later.” He bends down for clumsy hug with Tacitus and then leaves without another word. Severus looks down into his glass and smirks and ignores Tacitus’s shake of his head.

 

**Holiday**

 

July 31st 2004

 

The sky is a startling blue for the time in the morning and the sun is already soaking into Severus’s black robe. He checks that Potter is still engrossed in the menu and touches his wand in his pocket to cast a silent cooling spell. Better secrecy than admitting that his twit of a holiday companion was right about what was and wasn’t appropriate dress for the south of France. Across the table Harry can feel himself being scrutinised and re-reads ‘set breakfast number one’ for the fifth time just so he doesn’t have to make eye contact with Snape. Day three of their holiday and it still feels so awkward. Exciting and exhilarating also, but mainly awkward. Especially in the brightness of the morning when ordering some Dutch courage seems a bit brash.

Severus smirks as he watches Harry fidget and awkwardly push his glasses back up his nose. The pleasure of being able to manipulate the boy’s discomfort licked at his insides. A few weeks prior, in the middle of a heated row about something or other, the boy had kissed him and then clumsily asked him to go on holiday with him. Severus had agreed at once, sure that adding a sexual element (or exploring it at least; sex had been in the air since the first time he’d grabbed Potter and pinned him against a wall) to their already highly strung relationship was something that Potter would soon change his mind about. However, he hadn’t been prepared for the romantic attachment that the boy seemed to have pinned on him, for now he is sure that that is what it is: the boy cows under his gaze, blushes hot at the merest suggestive comment, looks shyly from under his mess of hair and doesn’t argue back no matter how rude Severus is to him. No, he’s certain that Harry’s newly exposed vulnerability is genuine, and it feeds a dark hunger for dominance that swells in Severus’s belly. Even so, he’s not sure how much longer the thrill of it will sustain him now that Potter’s become so shy and placid, so much less of a challenge. If he’s honest, the quiet compliance is already becoming a trifle boring. Part of him is ready to pounce, is ready to take full of advantage and have the boy once and for all, to hold him down and fuck him just so it will scare him away for good, so that he will finally be free of him.

A bored looking waiter approaches the table and Harry smiles up at him, glad to have someone interrupt the look Snape is levelling at him.

“Hi err, bonjour monsieur. Si vous plaits… errr.”

“Set breakfast number one,” the waiter says in perfect English, taking the menu out of Harry’s hand without giving him a second glance.

Snape continues to order his breakfast in French (which makes Harry’s stomach tighten), and then says something that makes the sullen waiter laugh. They continue to talk in French, Snape’s perfect enunciation making Harry’s skin tingle. When the waiter leaves the table, giving Snape a happy bow of his head, Severus turns to Harry and raises his eyebrows smugly, but Harry just colours and looks away. A twist of irritation at Potter’s lack of fighting spirit darkens Severus’s face, and he thinks that this will have to end soon, before Potter’s self-consciousness kills him with boredom.

~

It doesn’t go like that though, Potter doesn’t run away, isn’t disgusted. He clings at Severus for more, begs his name to the heavens, looks at him so intensely that it is Severus who has to turn away. When Harry eventually falls asleep in Severus’s rumpled bed, it is with a dreamy look on his face and an arm slung over Severus’s chest. Severus lies awake for hours thinking how to undo it. Eventually, he decides that he should leave the boy asleep, make his way home and simply never let Harry Potter in his house ever again. He slips out of the bed as quietly as he can.

The movement in the corner makes Harry stir and he reaches for Snape’s arm. He spreads his hand along the crumpled bed sheet, and when all he reaches is the end of the bed, he sits up, suddenly blinking wide awake.

By the door, Severus is crouched tying his shoelaces, his hair sweeping down along the side of his face so that all Harry can make out is the tip of his forehead.

“Snape. You’re not… What are you doing?”

Severus’s head dips down and for a moment he stays crouched on the floor, his shoulders rounding downwards, his palms spread open by his feet.

Harry’s still, watching, leaning on his arm, squinting at Severus without his glasses, afraid that the movement to get them will shatter the calm he already knows is brittle and temporary.

Severus rises slowly, turning smoothly on one heel, his head extending up, so that he blocks the doorway, his face horribly impassive.

“Please don’t,” Harry says.

Severus takes in a breath that seems to make him even taller and crosses his arms, his cloak catching in the arm of one elbow so that he looks uneven, lopsided.

“This was a foolish act of inebriation on both our parts. It ends here.”

He sees Harry visibly sag, moving in the bed to wrap his arms around himself and tuck his knees up.

“It wasn’t, you know it wasn’t. Please don’t do this.”

“Don’t be pathetic Potter. Even you can’t make yourself believe that this is something real.”

“Why? Why not? Why can’t this be real?”

Potter looks so small, so clean in his nakedness and the white sheets that are wrapped around him. The emotion is too clear on his face and Severus turns away.

“Please.” Harry squeezes the word out so that it is high pitched and long, but Severus is already turning, his hand reaching for the door handle. Harry leaps from his bed and lands against Snape hard enough to bump him off his feet and onto the door. He grabs at Severus, wrapping his arms around him, and rubbing his face into his arm.

Severus stills. He looks at his hand on the door handle, Potter’s grip around him, naked and shaking and clinging to him for all his life.

My life, Severus thinks. Potter’s naked body is warm even through Severus’s clothes, and he looks down at the arm clung around his chest. It is pale white, smooth muscle, tendons working where he is holding on so tight. He looks at the door handle. Behind it he knows there are neat red carpeted stairs, well lit. He knows that there is the night sky, hovering above the whole world and Severus could be wandering through it, unseen, untouched. Unheld. Potter’s grip tightens as if he knows which Severus is choosing and something in Severus breaks. He pushes his arms out, his elbow coming out hard and it knocks against Potter’s jaw.

Harry lets go, stumbling away, a hand clutching his face. “No,” he shouts and regains his balance so that he can charge at Severus again. Severus tries to block him, bringing his elbows up and Harry falls to his knees to avoid them and clings on to Snape’s legs.

Severus wriggle and kicks so that Harry lets go, sprawls back onto the floor on his arse. His face looks red raw, tears and snot smears reflecting in the light, his ragged mouth gasping hard so that his whole body heaves, and Severus hates him.

He lunges and grabs him by the hair, twisting hard so that Potter has to scramble to his feet. He’s crying out, horrible hollow bleats, and Severus flings him into the wall. They both hear the crack of his head hitting the brickwork, but he’s still sobbing, reaching arms out to Severus, trying to tell him that they can still go back, that they can save this.

Severus hits him. The sound of his fist against Potter’s cheek a dull wet thump, and pain shoots through Severus’s knuckles. He hits him again, and again and again, even when Harry crumples to the floor, his arms wrapping around his head to protect it, Severus punches and kicks, grunting as his pointed boots dig into Potter’s bones. He only stops when Potter stops moving, lies curled on the floor, blood splattering the wall behind him. His mouth is slack, open and Severus can see the blood on his teeth. His eyes are closed but flickering, like he’s dreaming and Severus stands, ghastly and bloody, panting over him.

Snape’s feet look like two dull black shapes. The rest of the room seems swallowed up by a blurry cloud so that the only thing that seems real are Snape’s black feet.

“Get up,” Snape’s voice asks him, quietly, croakily, not like Snape’s voice at all. “For god’s sakes get up.” That was better, bored and impatient and slippery.

Snape’s feet move and Harry flinches away, and Snape’s voice gets louder.

“Get up!”

Harry moves an arm and tries to lift himself up with it, but it’s like he’s forgotten how to push. And besides the floor is very comfortable, smooth and solid under his hot cheek. He flaps his arm to tell Snape it’s no use, that he’s alright where he is. He thinks Snape starts shouting again, but Harry’s ears sound like he’s underwater, the rush of wind and waves and then Harry is going to sleep. Someway far away someone is banging something and Snape’s feet are moving away.

Something jabs at his side, rousing him and he groans and tries to move away from it, but its too big and heavy and black and all around him. The ground moves and Harry tastes bile. He swallows and his throat is thick and tastes of rusty metal. He’s gently placed on something smooth and cool, softer than the floor so that it moulds around his bruised bones. He moans and eases back into it.

He wakes again to the tingle of magic close to his skin and Snape’s face close to his eyes. He lifts a heavy arm and drags it towards Snape.

Severus feels the hand curl around his arm, the fingers spreading out slowly, and he stops moving his wand. He looks in Harry’s eyes, peeping from under his swollen eyelids. He makes himself swallow and carries on tracing his wand over the split in Harry’s cheek.

He does it in the darkness, hot under his clothes but unable to stop and take his cloak off, muttering charms and healing spells, letting Harry grope and plead at him as he does so.

It takes hours but soon the boy’s face is put back together, though there is the lump of scar tissue across his cheekbone that Severus prays will have faded by morning. He heals his ribs, draws out the bruises that smatter his back and arms, all down his shins.

Harry reaches out his arm and clutches at Severus’s hand. “Stay,” he says hoarsely.

Severus nods though he doesn’t know if Harry sees it. He seems to have gone back to sleep, his face oddly serene amidst the swelling. Severus reaches a hand to his temple, trails his hand into his hairline. The hair is crispy with blood, papery in Severus’s hand. He stands up quickly, and staggers towards the bathroom. Inside he barely has time to stretch over the toilet bowl before vomit is violently arching out of him. He gasps and gasps, hunched over on the floor, breath gagging his throat as more and more liquid hurtles against the white porcelain.

He stays on the floor as if mesmerised by the slide of his sick dripping down into the water. The ventilation system hums, cutting off any outdoor sounds, and crisp clean light reflects off shiny surfaces. It takes Severus great effort to rise off his knees.

He leans over the sink. Sweat and spit run down his chin and drip loudly into the dry sink bowl. He has to make himself lift his head. His face looks like a mask, unrealistic lines and shadows, his eyes buried far back under his scrunched up brow. Drops of blood scatter his forehead, great smears of it across his cheeks.

He reaches for the soap and turns on the hot tap. He doesn’t feel the heat of the water as he scrubs at his face and neck, rubbing his hands together in a frenzy, sopping his clothes with water. He claws at the soap to clean his nails.

He leaves the bathroom damp and shaky to lie stiffly on the bed, still fully dressed. Harry instantly seeks out his warmth, feeling out where Severus is with a scuttling squeezing hand, until it settles, fingers spread, over his chest.

 

 

**Blue and Set-to**

 

31st July 2005

 

Harry opens his eyes to the sun glowing a halo of light around the curtains. On one side of him is the comforting feel of Snape’s long leg against his, on the other the two cats are curled up together, both having learnt that this side of the bed was much less hostile than the other and, if they were sneaky enough, they would be permitted to spend the night. Harry rolls over bringing a leg up to hook around Severus’s middle, and arm tracing the warm flat of chest. He buries his face in the crook of Severus’s neck.

“Mmmmm,” Severus says, and pats at Harry’s back, hoping he will go back to sleep.

“It’s my birthday,” Harry tells him with a lick at his neck. When he doesn’t get a response he bites a pinch of skin between his teeth.

Severus makes an indignant noise and opens one eye. Harry’s eyes are smiling at him, too close and awake.

“Happy Birthday,” he sighs, reclosing his eye.

Harry slides over him, his arms placed by the side of Severus’s head, pinning his hair beneath his hands, the bob of his erection brushing against Severus’s belly, his balls pushing against Severus’s own morning-hard cock. He opens his mouth for Harry’s tongue, stretching languidly and shifting so that Harry’s knees spread wider and his weight becomes heavy on his groin. He lifts his hands to grope at Harry’s arse cheeks.

He barely moves as Harry kisses him, nudging his head away to suck on his neck, arching his back to kiss down Severus’s chest, suckle on his nipple, whilst Severus murmurs. The slow grind of Potter’s arse on his cock was something he learnt to savour, to enjoy slowly, this sleepy sex.

He stretches to lick Harry’s chin as his cock is gripped, slicked with something greasy, and pushed against the hotness between Harry’s arse. They both fidget to push it inside and then Severus is lying back to let Harry ride him, his arms held above his head, fingers laced with Harry’s, he watches Harry’s face through half closed eyes.

Harry starts off slow, eyes looking into Severus’s for every reaction, giddy with the piercing desire he finds there and his own lucky power to be able to do this, to be able to hold Severus between his legs and watch him want him. He lets go of Severus’s hands to place them flat on his chest so that he can grind faster and Severus clutches at his bottom, gripping him tightly and raising him up and down, up and down.

Severus bites down hard on his lips, careful even in this lazy sex, to not clutch at Harry too much like love. He snatches a hand to grip at Harry’s cock to milk him. Harry comes, his head thrown back, his clean white throat exposed to Severus and the rippled clenching of his sphincter squeezes Severus to orgasm.

Harry collapses on top of him, sweaty skin slicking against sweaty skin, his legs sliding out from under him so that his full weight lies heavy and panting on top of Severus. They breathe quietly until the sweet swell of climax drifts away. Severus tries to make the weight of Potter feel like he is trapped, like the boy is smothering him, that what he really wants is to shove him off so he can get on with his day. His hand doesn’t listen though, coming up as it does to stroke at Harry’s forehead, to gently run fingers through a curl of hair.

“God I love you,” Harry says into the blackness of hair that is trapped between his face and Severus’s neck. Severus kisses his forehead and strokes a hand down his back and mumbles something Harry doesn’t hear, but that he knows isn’t “God I love you too.”

 

Downstairs, Tacitus is waiting by the kitchen door. He beams at Harry and gives him a hug and a kiss on his cheek, and ushers him into the kitchen with an arm around his shoulders. Inside the kitchen has been transformed. Floating all along the ceiling are golden balloons, and laid out across a deep red table cloth are plates and plates of food: bacon, eggs, hot buttered muffins, pancakes, syrup, different sorts of toasted bread, a sizzling tray of sausages.

“Blimey,” Harry exclaims, and reaches to give Tacitus another hug. “This all looks amazing.”

Tacitus watches the happiness on his face and grins. There was something about Harry and his eagerness to be pleased, always ready to be so grateful by the smallest acts of kindness towards him that made the otherwise chilly house that much warmer.  He reaches a hand to pat at Harry’s chest, and shakes his head when Harry does it back, _No, it was nothing_.

Severus stops himself from eyeing the gaudiness in his kitchen, and instead affords Tacitus a small nod before seating himself. He rolls his eyes when Harry starts loading his plate up, no regard for what he’s slopping together, and places one half of a muffin on his plate.

As Harry eats, Tacitus and Severus communicate to each other, Tacitus using odd hand signals and head movements that Harry can generally understand, but not when they are talking about plants and potions and their blessed Haven.

Harry half listens to Severus’s replies and drizzles syrup over his bacon, only pausing his eating to nudge Tacitus and gives him a thumb ups when he’s found something truly delicious.

He’s just admitting defeat, his stomach getting the point of discomfort when his ears prick up.

“What did you just say?” he asks Severus, swallowing as he and Tacitus turn to look at him.

“I said I’d be going to the new project space this afternoon.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“The world doesn’t stop just because someone has a birthday, even if it is our nation’s saviour.” Snape takes a sip of coffee and turns back to Tacitus.

“But we’ve got plans Severus, you know we have.”

Snape’s look is irritable, just the smallest glint of anger as his eyes fall back on Harry.

Sensing danger, Tacitus takes his cup of tea and half eaten bit of toast and retreats out of the room.

“You may have plans, but I don’t remember including myself in them.”

“But it’s my birthday.”

“Stop saying that, for god’s sake, how old are you today? You’re acting like a fucking four year old.”

“But, I’m having a party. You were supposed to come with me, it will look stupid if I go alone.”

“I’m sure you’ll deal with it.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“But—”

“I’ve said no, leave it at that Potter. There are more important things in my life than eating vol-au-vents and chewing the cud with the fucking Weasley’s.”

“More important things than me, you mean?”

“If you like, yes.”

“You’re such a git Snape. You knew how important this was to me. I’ve told them all that you’re coming.”

“Just because something is important to you, doesn’t mean its importance has any basis in reality. It’s a tea party for god’s sake, pull yourself together.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, I think we’ve already covered that. Maybe if you stop pissing and moaning I can do you again before I go out.”

“You always have to reduce this,” Harry flaps his hand to indicate the two of them, “Down to sex, as if that’s all there is.”

“You always try and stretch this,” Snape mimics the hand gesture, “Into something it’s not.”

Harrry sighs and rubs at his face with his hands. “Why does it always have to be like this with you?”

“It doesn’t have to be like anything,” Snape tells him. “In fact it doesn’t have to be anything at all.”

Harry sighs again and looks into Severus’s eyes, even though it’s fruitless – he won’t find anything he’s looking for there.

“And you don’t give a shit.”

“Nope. And I’m truly sorry if I ever gave you the impression that I’ve ever _given a shit_ , as you put it.”

Harry taps his teeth together and keeps looking at Snape hopefully, but he knows there’s no point.

“Now, are we done here? Is there anything else you’d like to whinge about all over my precious time or may I be permitted to leave.”

“Yeah go on then, leave before you might actually have to deal with anything difficult.”

Snape scoffs, “You, difficult? You’re as simple as turning this door handle. Watch, one little twist and it opens right up for me.”

“Fuck off.”

“Thank you, I think I will.”

In the hallway, Severus hears the crack of apparition and the pleasure of prodding sharp nasty words at Potter’s hopelessly soft, pathetically hurt face eases away.

 

Harry lands on Hermione and Ron’s door step and rings the bell.

Hermione answers, looking slightly flushed in an apron covered in flour and dough all over her hands “Harry, you’re here early!” She flings her arms around his neck, careful not to brush him with her foody hands. “Happy Birthday. My, you look… I mean your hair!” she says, pulling back to look at him.

“Yeah, sorry… just woken up.” He runs his hands through his hair trying to flatten it out a bit as Hermione steps aside to let him enter.

“I thought you had a Ministry thing to do this afternoon, for Harry Day?”

Harry shakes his head, “I moved it to tomorrow so that I could enjoy my birthday.” His voice is flat, and he’s unsmiling. Hermione runs her eyes over his dishevelled hair and crumpled pyjamas and the way he’s folded his arms around himself.

“What’s up?” she asks. “Snape?”

Harry shrugs and looks away and Hermione curls a hand round his arm.

“He’s not coming,” Harry tells her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, squeezing his arm.

Harry sighs and nods and looks down at Hermione’s gluey hand on his forearm.

“Whoops,” she says with a laugh, getting more flour over him as she tries to brush off her sticky hand print.

“Sorry about that. We’ll have  a good catch up later, right? I’ve got a birthday cake to make. Had to have a bit of a row with Molly so I could win the honour of baking it. Should have let her do it really, but she does all the others, kids included, and I’ve found this fantastic recipe…” He listens to her prattling, comforted by being in such a homey sort of home. He steps around beakers and colouring pens, the red fire truck he’d gotten Hugo for his birthday.

“Ron’s outside with the kids. He’s transfiguring some firewood into extra chairs. The kids are a bit overexcited, all dying to see you of course. Teddy came for a sleepover last night, so he’s already here.”

Harry heads outside, where Ron is muttering to himself over a wonky looking seat, and his three godchildren are racing each other around a tree at the end of the garden.

“Hello,” he says sidling up to Ron, who jumps and swings his head up.

“Hello mate! You’re here early.” Ron gives him a slightly bruising hug and they grin at each other. He looks at Harry’s crumpled t-shirt and grey jogging bottoms and raises an eyebrow.

Harry shakes his head (no, he doesn’t want to talk about it), and they both turn back to the chairs.

“Not going so well?” Harry asks, eyeing the motley collection of uneven chairs, some only with three legs.

“No, give us a hand will you?”

Before Harry can answer, his name is screeched from the end of the garden and three little bodies are racing towards him. He yells and slips past Ron and the chairs and tears up the garden. The children’s giggles chase him round the trees and back down the lawn where he lets himself be caught, diving onto the ground so that they can jump on top of him.

“We’re having a party!” Hugo squeals as he bounces on Harry’s chest.

“He knows that,” Teddy tells him, shoving him over to make room for himself. “It’s _his_ birthday.”

“Mummy and Daddy have got you a new cloak and we’ve got you some sweeties that mummy made and put in a jar,” Rose says, excitedly.

“You’re not supposed to tell him,” Teddy says rolling his eyes. “It’s supposed to be a secret, idiot.”

“Enough of all that,” Harry interrupts before a squabble breaks out all over him. “You’ve forgotten something very important.”

“What?” Teddy and Rose say at the same time.

“That you’re sitting on a monster!” High pitched shrieks jar his ears as they scrabble off him to be chased. He roars around the garden, Rose and Teddy squealing and keeping out of his reach, Hugo laughing and pretending to fall over so he can be caught and thrown in the air.

Hermione comes outside to see what all the noise is about, and she and Ron watch as Harry scrabbles across the lawn on all fours, not caring that he’s staining his pyjamas with long streaks of grass and mud.

~

Gathering that Evan is in no mood to be bothered with petty questions, the other workers at the newly built Haven stay clear of him, not even daring to ask if he’d like a cup of tea whilst he makes his notes.

Hazel eyes him from the doorway, stiff and black as always, the permanent frown on his forehead deeper as he squints up at the building he’s standing in front of. Not one for being intimidated by much, Hazel strolls right up to him and ignores the irritated scowl he flicks at her.

“How are you and the laddie doing?” she asks, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Fine,” Severus tells her curtly, turning his back rudely and making his way around the corner.

Unperturbed, she follows him. “Good good,” she says. “He’s a goodun’ that one, can see it plain as day. All that love he’s got inside him, pure as purest gold. Much more precious too. Something like that should be guarded over, that purity.”

Severus thinks of Harry’s face distorted by bloodlust, nails clawing at Severus’s skin, the thump of a punch across his nose and the glee in Harry’s eyes as he watches the blood pour out. He thinks about him spread over the back of the sofa, prising apart his own arse cheeks begging for Severus, begging him to do it harder, to smash his face into the cushions and hold it there.

He smirks to himself and doesn’t look up from his clipboard. He’s sure she’s gone when suddenly she’s there, whispering in his ear.

“You could be too you know, you could be just like him. All you have to do is let go and see that world still holds you... Pure as love, you could be.”

Severus stays frozen to the spot clenching his clipboard, as she treads quietly back round the corner.

~

Harry, Hermione and Ron sit at the kitchen table nursing coffee, the sky darkening through the windows, inky black blotting out the peachy sunset. Harry’s glad the day is over, grateful that his guests have gone and he no longer has to work on his cheeriness. Behind them the children are asleep on the sofa, all bundled together under a blanket.

“So,” Hermione says over her coffee cup. “Did he really have to work today?”

Harry sighs and leans back in his chair, huddling his arms around himself.

“Yes and no. He did work, but I don’t suppose he had to, not really. I don’t know,” he looks at Hermione and Ron, both waiting for him to continue. “It’s not just today, he never does anything with me, you know, anything social.”

“Well, he’s never been here,” Hermione says.

“He never goes anywhere. Except for the fucking Haven, or Ha _vens_ as it is now. He spends half his life there. …And he won’t let me go with him.”

Hermione and Ron nod in unison.

“He hasn’t even been to a single one of my Quidditch matches. Says it’s beneath him. I know that he means that it’s beneath me too… he just doesn’t get it I suppose.”

“Well, he’s always been quite particular about what he does and doesn’t like,” Hermione says.

“You mean he’s an arsey git,” Ron translates, and Harry laughs.

“ _And_ he won’t let Teddy stay,” Hermione adds, to remind them all.

“I know, I know, but he says it’s because it’s his house and he gets to say who’s in it and he does have a point. Sort of.” He looks down at his knees as Hermione raises her eyebrows. “Besides, he wouldn’t even let _me_ move in, not when I asked him. He told me to fuck off and wouldn’t speak to me for days.”

“But – you do live with him.”

“I know. I just stopped going home, starting bringing a few more things with me, and we’ve never mentioned it.”

“Alright, so he’s a _crazy_ arsey git.”

“He is, I know he is, but he’s more than that, and I… you know.” he trails off, and Hermione and Ron nod again.

“But are you happy?” Hermione asks him, so earnestly that he wants to laugh.

“Yes. Most of the time. Some of the time,” Harry shrugs. “It’s just not how I thought it would be. I mean, I knew it was never going to be easy and straightforward, nothing with Severus ever is and probably never will be, but he’s just… He’s _so_ difficult about everything, and sometimes he’s so cold that I can’t bear it. It hurts.” He thinks of Snape’s face, staring stonily when Harry went to put his arms around him, his body adamantly stiff, until Harry would let go and slink away in embarrassment.

“He seems to hurt you a lot mate. And not just, you know, emotionally,” Ron says, awkwardly.

“I know,” Harry says, a slink of guilt creeping in his stomach for all the times he’d turned up here in the dead of night, bleeding and gasping, and nowhere to go because Snape won’t calm down enough to let either of them go to bed.

“But that side of it.” He squirms in his seat, unsure of how much of himself he should reveal. “I’m ok with.” He purses his lips on a smile as Ron scrunches up his face and Hermione winces. “I mean, I know it probably isn’t healthy.” Snape’s cheeks pinched in Harry’s fingers, nails cutting his skin in bloody grooves, pulling his head back so he can slam it against Snape’s chin, not caring if his skin was split on Snape’s jagged teeth, “But it doesn’t always end badly.”

“If you’re going to start talking about Snape prodding you with his wand or whatnot, then I’m going to have to duck out of this one, mate,” Ron says, grimacing and putting his hands up.

Hermione clicks her tongue but Harry grins.

“It’s not just about the sex, the fighting. It’s about something else, something bigger than both of us. It’s like love and hatred and having the only person in the world you can hurt with both, and who will let you hurt with both.

“And the good bits are just so _good_ ,” he exclaims, and Hermione and Ron smirk to each other at Harry’s expression. It’s what they’ve dubbed his ‘Snape eyes’, when he goes all dreamy and glowy, like someone’s lit a candle behind his eyes. Hermione sighs and leans back in her chair.

“Like, when it’s a nice day or a beautiful sunset. We don’t speak, we just sit together and watch the sky change colour. And it means so much, it means more than just sitting there watching something pretty. It means that were alive and together and still able to feel the beauty, together, despite it all.”

Ron leans his head on his arms resting on the table, and nods grimly. Hermione gives Harry a resigned smile.

“Will you stay the night?” she asks, stifling a yawn. “I know three people who would be very happy to wake up and find their Uncle Harry still here.”

“No, not tonight, I’ve got Quidditch practice early.”

They kiss him by the door and when Ron’s heading up the stairs Hermione leans in to whisper into his ear, “Whenever you need us, we will always, always be here for you. We all love you so much, Harry.”

He nods and kisses her forehead. He’s not annoyed at her presumption, he and Snape have got a limited shelf life, he knows that; one day he’ll have to get out before he loses himself in the darkness and stops being able to find his way out. He disapparates with a wave of his hand and Hermione closes the door.

 

 

**Apart From**

 

31st July 2006

 

Severus has sat in the kitchen all day. He hasn’t bothered to spell anything clean and reuse it, so that by the evening the table is full of half-empty tea cups, coffee mugs, wine glasses, brandy glasses, port glasses. No plates though. He tells himself that when it gets dark he will give up this vigil, will go and sit somewhere else and stop watching the back door of his house that he knows won’t open anyway. He’d stopped letting people in months ago, and now only Tacitus or Hazel attempt to get him to the open the door, and they always come around the front.

He rests his head in his hands and peers blurrily at the blank bit of parchment in front of him. It had been a good intention of the morning, to write to say something that tells Potter that he’d got it wrong, but having never done anything like it in his life, not with words, he doesn’t know how to. He scoffs at himself. The only person on the planet who could have managed to make even Harry bloody Potter stop loving him. A part of him is rather proud. Another part is desperate, desperate for change in his life that he doesn’t know how to achieve. He knows he should let it go, that he should step outside, busy himself, but everything feels _over there_ , just out of sight and he can’t make himself interested. The sun is setting in the kitchen window and he can’t look at it.

He hasn’t been out in weeks, or is it months? His skin is back to being pale and tinged with blue and yellow. He can barely make himself eat and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so broken, what it is in him that has snapped and can’t be brought back together. In the day he writes and writes, and for the first time in his life it isn’t academic. Memories he didn’t know he had fill his mind, so clear and startling, and to stop himself living in them he writes them out. He’s got bookloads. The first time he got angry and magic surged out of him, smashing his father against the wall. The pain of the beating he’d got, struggling on his fathers lap as smack after smack after smack rained down on his arse. A time when his parents were happy, drunk and dancing to a record, Severus sat on the stairs watching through a crack in the door as he swung her around and she laughed, throwing her head back, the noise enough to make him not be scared back in his dingy bedroom.

Lily and himself hiding out in her parent’s shed talking and talking for hours, until it got dark and late and when they came out her parents were angry with fear, clutching at her and telling her to always, always tell them were she was. His father at his own house, slumped in an armchair, not even raising his head to look at him as he poked his head through the door. No words, just endless silence in that house. In this house.

Harry Potter, aged eleven and tiny and scraggy and Severus wishing he had more to hit at, even feeling then that the boy could never meet his anger’s expectations.

At night his dreams are filled with all the things he’s kept at bay for over twenty years. The feeling of that first kiss of power when Voldemort had burned the mark on his arm that would be there forever. Dumbledore’s feet on a wretched stormy night, Dumbledore’s face. And worst of all, Harry of course, always Harry. Whispering to him, chasing him, running away, the feel of him in his arms and then looking down to see that all he’d been clutching was nothing, that his arms were empty. Then he’d wake in his room alone and try and move but it was like he was awake in a dead body, he couldn’t lift his arms up, he’d try and scream but no sounds came out, and then he’d know he was still asleep, and there was Harry again, and it would start all over again, going around and around until he finally would wake, covered in sweat and shaking and too scared to go back to sleep. Severus Snape, afraid of his own dreams.

“Healing,” Hazel had said. “This is healing.” But how could it be? How could all this pain, so crippling to his heart, tearing strips out of his very soul, be healing? How is it healing to beg for death everyday?

But he won’t die. Even though the thought of it rattles through his brain every moment of every day, hiding just behind every single thing he does, tempting him with rest, with an end, he knows he will not die. Not for himself. Even though he has planned it; he has changed his will numerous times over the months, first to leave everything to Tacitus, then to Harry, then to Tacitus, then to the bloody cats, like some mad old cat lady he fears he’s becoming, and then back to Harry fucking Potter. Goodbye notes litter the fireplace, discarded when he remembers he has nothing to say and nobody to say it to. Sometimes he thinks it will be his writing he will leave behind, his legacy, the twisted stories of how he became. He’s scared that finishing them will be the real end, that then he won’t be able to stop it from coming for him.

Unwashed with ink stained hands and his hair hanging in a greasy thatch, he can smell himself through his filthy clothes, smell the stink of his own skin, and still he does not care. Help me, help me, he sometimes begs, on his knees clawing at the floor, and praying for a god he knew did not exist. Rocking, and rocking, late into the night, to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat just to remind himself that he _is_ still alive.

~

Minerva McGonagall smiles warmly at Harry from over spectacles and offers him a biscuit from a floral edged plate. He takes one and smiles back, finding it odd to see her out of the Hogwarts environment sat back in an easy chair in her own sitting room. She seems smaller, out of her teaching robes, delicate in the large chair. Her skin looks papery and crumpled, but her eyes are still bright, still tack sharp. The walls are wallpapered with a floral print charmed to change to suit her mood. Now they are bright and colourful and he knows that she is truly pleased to seem him. On the walls are a dozen framed awards that he never knew she’d won, that surround three large photographs of the Hogwarts staff. He can’t help but look for Severus, and there he is, in the middle one, young and thin but his expression already looking older than everyone else surrounding him.

“They’re from my three favourite years at Hogwarts,” she tells him following his gaze. “This one,” she indicates the top one, grainy and black and white, “is from my first year as a teacher. There I am.” She points with her wand to a young woman, hair pinned up, and smiling and Harry can just make out the Minerva he knows in her face. “Look, there’s Albus before he was Headmaster.” She points to an Albus Harry recognises from his pensive memories, who lifts a hand to wave and twinkles at he pair of them.

“This one is from the year I became Head of Gryffindor,” she points to herself again, older and sitting on the highest line, next to Dumbledore. “And there’s Severus.” Snape’s pale face looks back at them briefly and then looks down at his feet, his hair falling to cover most of his face. Harry feels her eyes watching for his response, but all he can do is nod stiffly.

“And this one,” She indicates the bottom photograph, the brightest of all, “Is the year I became Headmistress. Possibly not quiet accurate to call it a favourite year. I didn’t put it up for a long, long time, but over the years it has become to be a symbol of hope. Of faith and rebirth.”

She smiles at him again, and places her teacup in its saucer, resting on the arm of her chair. “Now, tell me Harry, what is it that makes you want to return to Hogwarts?”

He’s surprised by the sudden turn to business and it takes him a while to register what she’s asked him.

“I guess I’m ready for something more,” he tells her and she nods. “I feel like I have been drifting ever since the end of the war… I wanted my own life but I didn’t know how to get it. Now I want to put it to use, all those things I learnt. Pass them on.”

She nods again. “Defence against the Dark Arts I presume?”

Harry nods.

“Well, we do have someone in place already, as I’m sure you know, but I’d be more than happy for you to start as an apprentice with him until you learn the ropes. Or, change your mind, but I have no doubt that what you have to offer would be of great benefit to our pupils.” She underlines her words with a sharp look, and he knows that she really means them.

“Thank you.”

“Have you spoken to Severus recently?”

Even his name makes Harry’s heart beat quicken.

“No,” he shakes his head stiffly. “You?”

Minerva shakes her head too, and looks down into her teacup. She looks older, sadder and Harry wants them to talk about something else so that she’ll look bright and focused again.

“I heard he had become quite unwell.” Harry’s heart sinks. Even though he knows, hearing it come from Minerva McGonagall’s mouth makes it seem much more real. Tacitus had come, repeatedly, trying to drag him, pulling him out of the house and halfway down the path before Harry could shake him off and try and explain why he couldn’t go. Tacitus had got on his knees, his hands together, rocking and the sight of that alone had made Harry cry. He’d hid his face in his hands, and sunk to his knees, shaking his head. Tacitus hadn’t stopped though, scrabbling bits of twig and snapping them in half, holding them up to Harry’s face so that he could watch them break.

“I know, and I’m sorry, but I can’t come back, I can’t help him.”

Tacitus had tugged on his sleeve, leaning back on his heels miming with his hands, loud pats on his heart, his fingers walking, and then being battered away.

“He won’t let you in.”

Tacitus had nodded and clasped at Harry’s hand, but Harry had had enough. He picked himself up, blurting “I’m sorry,” as he rushed back to the safety of his open front door. Slamming it behind himself he’d run up the stairs, gotten into bed, curled in a ball, his shoes still on and the duvet over his head until Tacitus had finally stopped knocking. He only got up when he felt sure that his body wouldn’t immediately take him to Spinner’s End.

“I don’t mean to tell you that so as you feel any blame, or so that you feel you should help him,” she says quickly, scanning his face. “But to tell you that I think this is something he needed.”

He nods and chews on this inside of his lip.

“Obviously I can only imagine what hell he’s currently living through, but wishing it wasn’t so, something that I do a lot when it comes to Severus’s life, won’t alter the fact. That man’s been broken a long, long time. Perhaps he’s finally learning how to fix himself.”

Harry leaves with a lifted spirit, feeling lighter as he turns to disapparate on her doorstep. Minerva’s hope, Minerva’s rational wise hope, twists together with his own, easing his heart, opening his lungs so that the air feels fresher, so that he can finally look up at the darkening sky and not be blinded by fear and guilt and endless, endless remorse.

~

Dawn is lighting the kitchen window and Severus is on his knees on the floor. He looks up, watches the dark blue turning paler, hears the singing of birds in the trees and the silence of his house ringing in his ears. He twists and sprawls on his back on the floor, stretching so his arms are above his head, stretching out his long legs, his long bare toes. The tiled floor is cold and hard, painful under the weight of his head, painful under his coccyx. His body feels soft and hot and alive on top of it, breathing in and out, his heart pumping, the muscles in his hands working so that he can twist them and run them along the smooth cold floor. He lies back and watches the light fill up his kitchen, shadows and colours and beauty, and knows that finally, the end has come.

 

 

**Re-Drawn**

 

July 31st 2007

 

Severus taps his nails on to the wooden table and tries to drag his eyes away from the door. Surrounding the bar is a group of ramblers and he looks at them, kitted up in hats and backpacks and hiking sticks. They’re all without shoes, mud covering their calves from the ankles up, the feet of their socks bright and clean underneath. He listens to them loudly discussing what each of them will drink, a bossy plump woman with rosy cheeks relaying the order to the barmen. “Food? Should we have something to eat whilst we’re here?” she asks her group, and Severus feels his own stomach rumble. He pours some more cream into his tea, pleased by the little china jug it had come in. He hadn’t thought Muggle pubs would be so civil.

He loses interest in the ramblers, and watches as an old man tips water into a large glass ashtray and bend to place it on the floor by his panting dog. The man struggles to get down, his knees stiffened by age, but he makes it so that he can stroke the dog’s head whilst it drinks. Severus watches him mutter into the dog’s ears.

Harry lands in a bush and grabs onto one of the branches to stabilise himself. He takes a deep breath, and heads out onto the road. It’s a blustery day and the wind is rippling the grass down the hillside so it looks like water. The pub he’d been directed to is the only building around and sits a few yards up the road. He heads up, admiring the view, the vast slopes of green, a trickling shimmer of water running far below in a valley. Outside the pub he pauses by the door. This is it, he thinks. He takes a deep breath and pushes the door open. Severus is sat on a wooden seat in the corner, looking neat and old, teacup held in his hand. His hair is long, tied back and streaked with grey. He’s wearing a shirt, a light blue that doesn’t contrast jarringly with his pale face. Harry watches him watching a man kneeling on the floor by his dog, his expression neutral, blank but not empty.

Severus is so engrossed in the man’s affection for his dog, that he doesn’t notice Harry until he’s already by his table.

“Hello,” Harry says. He almost flinches as Severus’s gaze flicks up to him.

He swallows. “I’ll get a drink. Would you like another?”

Severus shakes his head a slow movement, deliberate and odd and solemn, making Harry unsure what he had asked him. It takes a while for Harry to make himself turn away. When he does he feels odd, his legs wobbling as they carry him to the bar.

Severus watches his clumsy walk, the way he grips at the bar when he reaches it. He looks bigger, neater, dressed in light clothes, a thin white shirt that is rolled up at the arm, dark blue trousers and brown shoes with no socks, the type that remind Severus of boating, though he’s never been. As Harry gets the barman’s attention, Severus eyes the door and thinks about how easy it would be to slip out without a whisper out into the fresh quiet landscape, how easy it would be to disappear. But Harry’s already coming back from the bar and his eyes hold Severus where he’s sat.

Harry balances himself on the stool opposite from the bench Severus is sitting on, and places his wine glass carefully on the table.

He’s annoyed at the feeling of pressure to begin conversation when it had been Severus who had sent for him. He looks at him, so still and graceful, his eyes eating at Harry’s insides and knows that the man is never going to speak first. But then Harry had always known that.

He has to look away to speak, knowing that the words would sound trite and banal with them looking at each other the way they are. “How are you?” he asks into his wine glass.

“Good,” Severus says, brusquely and Harry nods and looks towards the large group of people sat on their left. They seem to be a million miles away from him, talking loudly and smiling at each other. He wonders if Snape’s looking at him, or is looking away.

“Why did you want to see me?”

Harry keeps his eyes on the group of ramblers, and Severus looks at him, the side of his neck, the way the hair curls around his hair and glasses, his arm stock-still as his fingers hold the base of his glass. The question hangs in the air, and Severus realises that he can’t do this. He’s not ready, it’s too hard and Potter wants the one thing he knows he won’t be able to give – words, feelings lost in the translation to language and he wishes the boy word take it from his body instead, from the look in his eye, from the way he would hold his head, would kiss his eyes.

Harry turns and frown at him, but Severus doesn’t meet his eye.

“If we’re just going to sit in silence then I’m going to go... I’ve things to do. It is my birthday.” The words sound harsher out of his mouth than in his head, demanding and cross when he’d meant them to be calm, persuasive.

Severus doesn’t move, just keeps looking at Harry’s jaw, at his lips and the stubble that’s darkening the skin around them until Harry exclaims “For god’s sake!” and the knuckles of his clenched fist knock against the table.

Severus doesn’t react until Harry’s getting to his feet and stepping almost out of reach, and then he’s snatching at his wrist. Their skin almost crackles from where it is touching and Harry’s stepping back against his will, back to Snape.

Severus holds on tightly until Harry tries to twist his arm out of his grip, and then he finally speaks. “Not here,” Severus says, the words almost choking him. “At home.”

Harry looks around the pub and feels unsure. It is warm and busy, lit by lamps and ceiling lights and the chatter of people. The thought of Snape’s house makes him feel cold. He bites his lip and Snape’s hand tightens, bony fingers digging in to Harry’s wrist until he eventually nods his head

Snape holds on to him all the way to the bush, Harry letting himself be guided, relieved not have to choose or think or make himself move. They’re barely inside it before they’re spinning away and landing on Snape’s front steps.

Inside, Snape’s house is different. Daylight floods the stairway, reflecting on the polished wood, the usually dark narrow hallway looks wide and welcoming and he can see all the way into the kitchen. Going in a diagonal line up the stairs are a series of small windows, no bigger than a head, all in neat circles. At the top is a large skylight that fills the landing outside his old room with daylight.

He turns to Snape to say something about it, but the look on Snape’s face stops his words from forming, and he suddenly knows that he if he’d wanted to keep his distance then he shouldn’t have come here. Snape’s face looks so hungry, and worse, there is desperation in his eyes that makes Harry want to recoil from him. In the light Harry can see the fine lines around his eyes, the pores on his nose, the yellow on his uneven front teeth. Snape inches his hand towards Harry’s, creeping his fingers onto it with such a gentle touch that it feels like a violation. Harry can’t stop his body from reacting, can’t stop his hand from opening to the touch and Snape strokes across his palm, up to hold his wrist again, this time his fingers barely touching it. He pulls on it, the tiniest of movements, but Harry is already moving closer, tipping his head back as Snape bends towards him.

Snape’s kiss is like a whisper on Harry’s skin, a ghost of a kiss and he’s reaching for more. Their mouths barely move, and Harry closes his eyes so that all there is the feel of Severus’s face meeting his in kisses. He sinks against him and one of them groans and they’re opening up, tongues sliding across lips, tasting and sucking and so slow that it doesn’t feel real.

He gropes at Snape’s shoulder, feeling the bone underneath it with his thumb, and Severus slips greedy hands around his waist, tucking them under Harry’s shirt to slide up his back.

He feels Snape pull away and latches his arms around him even tighter. When he opens his eyes, Snape is looking at him, mirth in his eyes and he nods his head towards the sitting room, guiding Harry by the arm.

The sitting room is different too. The two small windows have been replaced by a vast expanse of glass that nearly takes up the whole front wall. Harry’s standing looking at it when Severus slides his hands back around his waist.

He lets Snape undress him, eyeing him as each button of his shirt is slowly undone. Severus slips it off his shoulders and runs his hands along his arms, down his sides to the waist of his trousers. He unzips them and kneels to slide them down Harry’s legs. In the brightness of the room, Harry’s body looks more real, he can see the hairs at his navel, the curve of his stomach as it stretches up to his ribs, he can see the movement of his breathing.

Harry looks down at him, crouched at his feet, his face near enough to Harry’s prick for him to feel his breath on it. He reaches down and tugs Snape up by his shirt, unsettled by the sight of him kneeling before him. With trembling hands Harry fumbles at the buttons of his shirt, on the fly of his trousers.

Harry kisses Severus in the same unhurried way of the hall, slowly opening his mouth with his lips. Severus’s hands inch around his back gently stroking and Harry arches at the feel of it, pushing his cock against Snape’s.

They are both so hard, Harry can feel the heat of it as they push against each other, but nothing speeds up. Snape is running his hands over his skin like he’s never felt it before, and Harry’s shuddering and arching and stretching his neck up. He grips at muscle of Snape’s shoulders, digging his fingers in the dips, pinching at the nobbles of his spine. As Snape moves his mouth onto Harry’s throat, his forehead nudging at his jaw to push his head further back, Harry reaches for his hair and tugs out the elastic holding it. He watches as it falls over Snape’s pale shoulder, clean but tangled and he grabs a handful and brings it to his mouth. It tastes salty and spicy as he sucks on the ends of a strand, slowly pulling it out between his lips.

He grips at Severus’s hips, who lets himself be angled towards the sofa. When Harry pushes him, he sits, leaning back and opening his legs. Harry’s eyes rake over his sinewy body, pale and taught, the dusting of dark hair that creeps towards his naval. Harry slowly moves his leg, his toes sliding up Snape’s calf before he bends his knee and places it on Severus’s thigh. He climbs on and they slowly arrange themselves so that Harry has Snape’s thighs gripped between his own so that their cocks bob against each other. Harry places a hand on Severus’s chest and rubs it, and then Snape is bending his head forwards and licking at Harry’s mouth with a slow swipe of his tongue. Snape pulls back to look at him, his eyes so searching that Harry doesn’t want them on him, he turns his head away and Severus nips at his neck.

Harry overreacts to the bite, jolting his shoulder so that it knocks Severus on the chin and suddenly Snape is grabbing his hair and pulling his head back forcefully and Harry’s hands are on his neck and squeezing. Snape rakes his teeth painfully down Harry’s throat and Harry digs his nails into the back of Snape’s neck as hard as he can.

Their heads collide as they scratch and pull at each other’s skin, Snape grabbing Harry’s face by the chin and forcing his tongue between his lips. Harry grinds down on top of him, and after he manages to pull his face out of Snape’s grasp, he lunges for his cock and lifts himself over it. Snape runs a spit-slicked finger around Harry’s arsehole before he pushes in.

Snape’s cock feels too big, too sudden but Harry sinks down hard on it and lets out a squeal of pain that curls Snape’s toes. His teeth jar against bone as Snape drives his hips up. He grabs a hard pinch of Harry’s arse cheeks so that he squeaks and jerks upwards and then Snape is shoving him down again. They slam against each other, painfully, grunting as their bodies collide. Snape grabs Harry’s cock, roughly, gripping it a little too tightly, and letting his hand move with the thrust of his hips, until Harry’s keening and splattering come onto their stomachs, his body becoming floppy as Snape drives into him. He comes with an aching shudder, his legs trembling under Harry’s weight, and he digs his fingers into Harry’s sides, gripping at him until he’s ridden it out. He lets his head loll back onto the sofa, breath shooting through his nose. Harry tries to tuck himself under Snape’s chin, but no arms come around to hold him. He kisses Snape’s neck and feels it tense under his touch.

Their breathing quiets and in the silence that follows the atmosphere stiffens. Harry suddenly feels exposed, laid bare somewhere he doesn’t want to be seen. He feels stuck though, stuck against Snape as if staying long enough will make everything go back to how it was. Snape’s whole body seems to be retreating away from him, his face clouding over and Harry finally scrabbles off his lap. He grabs his clothes from the floor, hurrying to dress, to cover himself up. Come seeps out of his arse and he takes his wand and spells himself clean through his trousers. Snape doesn’t move, his head still back, he eyes closed and in the light of the new windows his skin looks papery and fragile and Harry doesn’t want to look at it. As soon as he has both feet in his shoes, he’s fleeing from the room, rushing at the front door and out into the open air, a dry sob heaving through him as he tries to concentrate enough to apparate himself home.

Snape lets him go without protest. He doesn’t want to feel Potter’s eyes on him any more. He’s not sure if he ever will again.

~

Later Severus lies on the sofa, still naked and curled into the corner with his head on the arm. He gazes out of the window, his wand in his hand idly prodding at the velvet covered buttons that pinch the fabric together. The view isn’t much to look at, the opposite side of the deserted street, the grimy building with smashed windows that used to house their Ministry guard. Litter is collected against the curb, blown there by the wind and left there by an absence of people who care if it’s cleaned up or not. Severus is not really looking anyway; he’s too lost in thought. A year he had been building up to this day, a year in which he’d battled to understand himself, battled with his history, all his old war wounds. But it had gone wrong. He had been too clumsy, distracted by Potter’s body when what he was trying to say was something different.

He tells himself he should let it go, admit defeat, admit that some things are too broken to be fixed, but Harry’s eyes seem to hover before him and in them is a question he knows he can answer, knows that he is ready to answer. He blinks them away and looks at the sky.

~

“Pardon?” Harry says for what feels like the hundredth time that evening. Neville looks hurt and Harry can feel Hermione’s eyes, furrowed under her brow boring into him from across the table. He nudges his untouched lasagne with his fork.

“Sorry I was miles away,” he says, smiling at Neville apologetically.

“I was just saying –” Neville’s interrupted by a loud screech and the beating of large wings as a great grey owl swoops towards them. Harry recognises it instantly as being Snape’s and lifts his arm up for it to land on. The owl eyes him impatiently as he undoes the ribbon holding a tiny scroll of paper.

“Thank you,” he says, but the owl is already flying away, swooping over the heads of the other diners, who watch it soar out of the door and into the sky.

“I’m just going to…” he gestures with the scroll, and moves his chair back from the table with a loud scrape. He ignores the inquisitive look levelled at him by Hermione, and scuttles away from the table.

In the toilet, he goes to the cubicle and locks the door. The scroll feels heavy in his hand, and he thinks about just throwing it away. There was nothing left to be said, surely today proved that. He chews on his lip, and looks at the ceiling and wishes he could make his hand chuck it in the toilet bowl and flush. He sighs and unfolds it.

_I apologise for today, it wasn’t what I intended, I didn’t mean for that. There is more to say, I know that._

That was all it said and Harry groans. He wants it to be over, wasn’t it over already? They’d moved on, Snape had gotten better, Harry had learnt how to live without him, the longest, hardest journey he’d ever made. He would love Snape until the day he died, he knew that, but he didn’t know if he that meant he could bear having him in his life again.

He looks back at the note, the neat precise mark of each of Severus’s letters and wonders how so few words could hurt his head so much. His cheeks burn with shame at their earlier encounter, how he’d let himself come undone. He hears the door of the toilet open and someone raps loudly on the cubicle.

“It’s me, open the door,” Hermione’s impatient voice commands him, and he reaches to flick the catch of the lock.

She bustles in, both of them craning over the toilet so they can re-shut the door.

“What’s going on? It’s Severus isn’t it?”

Harry nods, and hangs his head and looks so young and lost that she has to reach out and grip his shoulder.

“But I thought…. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he groans. He tells her about the note he’d received, about going to meet Severus in the pub, and what had happened back at the house. He passes her the small piece of parchment in his hand, which she spends a long time frowning at.

“And you didn’t want to?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean I did, of course I did, as soon as I saw him I _wanted_ to. But afterwards it was just, it felt horrible. He was horrible. …And I can’t do it again.” The words are garbled and Harry feels hot tears start to sting his eyes.

Hermione squeezes his shoulder and is about to speak when there’s another knock at the door.

“It’s me, what’s going on?” rasps Ron.

Hermione opens the door and Ron tries to join them in the cubicle, but there’s no room so they shuffle out and huddle around the wall opposite the urinals.

“What’s happened?” Ron asks, still whispering. Hermione looks at Harry who leans his head on the wall and closes his eyes.

“Well,” she says, “Harry went and saw Severus today and they, you-know, and he’s very confused and upset. And now Severus wants to speak to him and he doesn’t know what to do about it.”

She watches Ron’s face crinkle in disbelief.  “But, I thought all that was all over with?”

“So did I,” Harry groans, and he takes his glasses off to rub at his eyes.

“Well then, tell him to sod off. You don’t owe that git anything.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Ron,” Hermione says, reaching to hold both their shoulders and Harry places a hand over hers and squeezes.

“How is it complicated?” Ron asks. Harry looks at Hermione to explain.

“Because he still has feelings for Severus.”

“Do you?” Ron asks, craning his puzzled face towards Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry says glumly.

“Oh.”

There’s a silence as Ron rubs at his chin, Harry tries to squint away an approaching headache and Hermione studies the scroll in her hand.

“He contacted you?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“What for, what was the reason?”

“All we did was have sex… I don’t know if there was another reason. You know him, he’s sadistic enough to have no qualms in fucking me around for his own pleasure.”

Ron’s body stiffens and Harry absently pats him on the arm.

“But… then why would he write you another note?”

Harry shrugs.

“What happened? I mean, apart from the, you-know,” she flaps her hand. “How was he?”

“I don’t know… quiet mainly. A bit shy I suppose… And then he just ignored me.”

Hermione looks at the note again, so much like a detective that Ron smiles fondly at her. He watches her eyes flick from the note to Harry’s miserable face and sees her purse her lips the way she does when she’s trying to figure something out.

“Did you try and talk to him?”

Harry shakes his head. “I had to get out of there. It was too weird.”

Ron pats him on the back like he’s finally said the right answer and Hermione chews her lips and searches his face. He looks away because he knows she’s going to tell him something he’s not sure he wants to hear.

“I don’t know, Harry. This is _Snape_. When has he ever said that he wanted to see you? And twice in one day?”

“I know. It is weird isn’t it?”

“Yes but, isn’t this what you always wanted from him? Some sign that he cares?”

He bites on the inside of his cheek.

“I don’t know, maybe. It’s just…” He tries to pinch his eyes shut on the tears, but his voice trembles anyway, “…I’m scared.” And he feels their hands holding his arms, rubbing at his back.

“Of what?” Hermione asks gently.

“Of loving him again… of him loving me. Of hating him, of it all going wrong and having to get over it again. I’m not strong enough for that.” He bows his head and Hermione puts her face against his cheek. Ron’s heavy arms come around them so that they’re all pushed together.

When he stops crying he makes no move to untangle himself. A sudden pang of nostalgia hits him, for them to all be small again and huddled under his invisibility cloak, when everything seemed simple, everything governed by their own naivety, their own ignorance.

“I never thought I’d be saying this,” Hermione says into his ear, “Never thought I’d be advising you to go back to bloody Snape, but that fear, how scared you are _means_ something. It tells you it’s important, that he’s important.”

Harry sniffs and nods his head.

“What harm could it really do to go and hear what he has to say? Maybe it will be the end, but even then, at least you’d know.”

She’s right, he knows she’s right. She’s always bloody right, and it’s a comforting thought, to know that there are some things that stay the same. He feels their bodies pressed against him, the warm smell of their clothes and feels buoyed by it. Whatever else, there would always be the three of them, and Hermione and Ron would always hold him in a stinking men’s toilet if that was what he needed.

“Yeah,” Ron’s voice says gruffly over his head. “And to be honest, you’ve never had Snape-eyes over anyone else.”

Harry lifts his head up to look at Ron’s face. “What, even you’re telling me to go and see him?”

Ron shrugs. “Well I’m not saying you should marry the git or anything, but you might as well go and see what he has to say.”

Harry groans. “Fuck,” he says, and leans his head on Ron’s chest.

~

Snape’s making slow rounds of his sitting room, corner to corner, trying to keep himself calm and measured. A hammering starts on the door, and he freezes, eyes on the hallway. The journey to the front door seems long and his hands stumble over the catch.

He’s barely opened the door when Harry Potter pushes past him, and marches into the living room.

“You had no right to do that earlier,” he says swinging around and pointing a finger as Snape glides into the room behind him. “That was cruel, you knew what it would do to me.” Severus’s eyes flick to the finger jabbing in his direction and up to Harry’s face.

Harry lowers his arm and swallows. “I can’t do this again, I can’t play these fucking games, I can’t try and guess what you’re thinking all the time because you’re too fucking scared to tell me.”

Severus nods, and sits down neatly in the armchair. His calmness in the face of Harry’s rage makes Harry want to kick him, but he sits when Severus gestures for him to do so, gripping his knees and glaring across the coffee table.

Severus has to stop himself from licking his lips. The passion of Harry’s anger is still like a trigger to Severus’s cock and he pushes all his urges down, deep down, so he can focus on Potter’s words.

“So you can tell me right now or I am walking out of the door and never coming back, ever again.”

Severus sighs, “Alright Potter, enough with the melodrama. A little patience if you don’t mind, we can’t all have your verbal dexterity.”

Harry frowns, but shuts up, and watches as Snape becomes increasingly uncomfortable, rubbing at his temple, holding his chin, twisting his hands in his lap. He’s never seen so much as a wrinkle in Snape’s composure before, and to witness it is bizarre.

Eventually Severus clears his throat. “I didn’t mean for earlier to happen quite how it did. I was trying to… I had intended…” He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. “We got carried away, we lost ourselves… Don’t look like that Potter, I didn’t hear you complaining much at the time.”

“Yes but I –” Severus raises a hand to silence him.

“This is difficult enough, don’t interrupt me.”

“Then don’t try and wind me up.”

Severus grits his teeth. “I’m not trying to wind you up, if you’d actually listen to what – oh fuck it, this is pointless!” He runs his hand up the side of his temples and grips his head.

“I’m listening,” Harry tells him, but Snape seems to have run out of words. His head is still clutched in his hands, tangles of hair sticking out between his fingers making him look crazed. He eventually shrugs and leans back on the sofa and Harry makes and impatient noise in his throat and glares at him, but Snape remains silent.

“Do you love me?” Harry barks, before Snape’s silence snaps something in him and he starts throwing around the furniture. They both jump at the loudness of his voice, and Severus’s eyes become darker.

“Well?” Harry demands. If he wasn’t so angry, he might have laughed at the tiniest inclining of Snape’s head, more like a twitch than a nod.

“You need to tell me in words, do you love me?”

“Trust you to labour the point, Potter,” Severus says, and rolls his eyes.

 “Trust you to still not be able to say it. Do you love me?”

Severus moves his jaw from side-to-side and narrows his eyebrows, and Harry’s face darkens.

“I need to hear you say it. Do you love me?” His voice bounces around the room, echoing in the fireplace, reverberating in both their ears and Snape leans back on the sofa and covers his eyes with a hand.

“Yes. Yes, of course I fucking do,” he snarls, and Harry laughs at how bitter he sounds.

“I thought it was fucking obvious,” Snape tells him, crossing his arms and scowling.

“How? You kept trying to make me leave you alone.”

“Yes, but you not very successfully. I seem to remember you being here a lot.”

“Yeah… But then I wasn’t.”

“No. Then you weren’t,” Snape says and looks down. “And you?” he asks his eyes fixed on the coffee table.

“And me what?”

Snape rolls his eyes again. “If you are going to make me spell out every fucking thing I say, then we may be here for the rest of our lives.”

“Well, stop being so bloody cryptic.”

“And you, you know… Do _you?_ ” He’s still not meeting Harry’s eye and his arms are wrapped tightly around him, hands holding firmly onto his forearms.

“Jesus, didn’t I tell you often enough? I practically had your name carved in my chest! …You know the answer, why else would I be here?”

“I need to hear you say it,” Snape says in what is a well practised imitation of Harry’s voice.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Yes, then. Yes, yes, yes. Fuck yes.” Snape’s lips twitch and he looks down at his lap. Harry sighs and leans his head back onto the sofa and looks at Severus appraisingly. He suddenly looks beautiful, something he’s never done before. The smoothness of his forehead, the dark lashes on his high cheek bones, the line of his jaw.

“So what happens now?” Harry asks, and Snape’s eyes flick to his.

“Well… what do you want to happen?” Snape asks.

Harry fiddles with his hair and screws his face up to think. He’s too tired for this really, wants to go home, but knows that nothing will feel like a refuge until this is finally finished with.

He lifts his head up from the back of the sofa. “I don’t want to be angry anymore. Or hurt, or scared that if I take a step too far then I’ll be out of your life forever. I don’t want to fight.”

Severus nods for him to continue and Harry chews on his lip. Silly romantic images fill his head, him and Snape laughing in bed, him curled up asleep on Snape’s lap, endless kisses and long lovesick looks. He frowns them away and tries to articulate what it is that he wants more than anything.

“I want you to let me love you. Properly,” he says, and looks earnestly at Snape, who narrows his eyes and twists his mouth up, like there’s a retort in his mouth that he’s trying to stop coming out. 

“And you, what about you? What do you want Severus?”

Snape closes his eyes and flops his head onto the back of the chair.

“Tell me.”

“Right now, I want a cigarette and a drink.”

Harry clicks his teeth. “Be serious.”

“Oh, I’m being deadly serious.” Snape sits up and crosses his arms, and looks menacing so that maybe Potter will leave him alone.

“Severus.”

Snape scrunches his eyes closed as if he is pain. “I want you to come back. I want you to be here.” He doesn’t open his eyes to see Harry’s response.

“And what if it’s just like before? What if it’s nasty again?”

Severus stills and opens his eyes. “Well that depends on you as much as on me, Potter,” he says.

“On _me_? I loved you, I’d have done anything for you.”

“Would you have?”

Harry nods his head fervently. Of course he would have, he’d have died for him. He let himself be Severus’s punch bag, his lapdog, he’d have done anything.

Severus purses his lips and slowly shakes his head.

“You didn’t love me, you –”

“Yes I did!”

“Do not interrupt me!”

This time Harry shakes his head and grinds his teeth together to keep himself from shouting back.

“You didn’t love _me_.”

Harry shakes his head and opens his mouth again, but Snape silences him with a raise of his hand.

“Not all of me, not who I really am. You wanted to keep me as a fantasy, your dark fantasy. _Yes_ , Potter,” he says as Harry shakes his head again.

“But I wanted to be with you. Despite whatever else, I wanted you. It was you who wouldn’t let it–”

“It was not. It was you, you who kept us fixed to the caricatures of ourselves. Stop looking so incredulous and listen to me.”

“No, I tried to make it work! I did everything I could to make it work!”

Snape shakes his head. “But you could never have made it work, because that wasn’t what it was about.”

“I loved you!”

Snape scoffs. “You didn’t want love. You wanted to be hurt, you wanted to suffer.”

“No! I thought if I loved you, if you could see how much I loved you then you would…”

“Then I would what? Be healed, be happy? You didn’t want that, not really.”

“That isn’t true, that’s all I wanted, was for you to be happy!”

“How? By hitting you? By hurting you? By pulling you apart?”

“No!”

“Yes!”

Harry curls into himself and wishes he could stop all of this from sounding so true.

“That night in France,” Severus says quietly.

“Don’t, please. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just about that.” He’s crying now, rubbing his face with his hands, wishing Snape would stop. He shakes his head and wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

“So what are you saying, that it was all my fault?”

“No. I’m all too aware of the things I have done, I can promise you… But you sought me, or more accurately, a particular part of me. You wanted me to act how you expected me to act. And so I did.”

The words dig at Harry’s heart and he knows they are true. He sought Snape, he sought all his bitterness, his nasty words, his fragile temper. He takes his glasses of and rubs his hands over his face.

“I didn’t know how else to have you. I didn’t know what else I could offer you.”

“I know… I believe we were the same in that.”

Harry looks at him and it’s like he’s seeing someone else, someone with nothing left to hide behind. More than that, it was like he suddenly had a different history, all the things he’d held as true splintering apart to take him into a new reality.

“I don’t want you like that any more,” he says quietly, after a while. “I want all of you.”

“Do you?” Severus’s voice is like whispering silk, and Harry shudders.

“Yes I… Of course I do.” But he looks away as he says it.

“Then what happened earlier?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean… It was you who looked away Potter, not me, you who pushed for it to turn the way it did.”

Harry swallows. “That wasn’t how it was, I wanted… I wanted…” He trails off. He didn’t know what he’d wanted, but he knew what he’d expected: cruelty and a savage fuck. He’d not allowed room for anything else. He groans and pulls his legs up onto the sofa so that he can tuck his chin behind his knees.

“I was scared.”

“I know.”

Harry closes his eyes to think properly. “You treat me the same way,” he says, sitting up a few minutes later. “You act like I should think you’re bad and you’re always pointing out my goodness, even if you disguise it as criticism, even if you tell me I’m stupid for it. Really you’re constantly pointing out that I’m different to you.”

Snape nods and sighs. “The good to my bad,” he says after a long pause.” What are we without that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry mumbles, hoping that Snape doesn’t expect an actual answer to the question. “But I don’t think you’re bad… you’re the best man I’ve ever known.

Snape laughs, an actual laugh that creases his face up and comes in snorts out of his nose.

They look at each other and it’s weird, like they’ve only just met.

“I need a drink,” Harry says. “Don’t you have anything?” He looks at the empty liquor cabinet, the lack of ashtrays and thinks that there is another reason Snape looks so different; he’s not got a cigarette between his fingers or a glass to his lips

When Snape shakes his head Harry chooses not to ask any questions. He stretches his legs out. “I need some air, I need to think. I’m going to the garden, I’ll be back in a bit. Just… don’t go anywhere.”

Outside he looks up at the night sky. Everything seemed much simpler earlier in the day when Snape was just being his usual bastard self. Now it turns out that he wasn’t, and that he never was, not completely. Harry feels the same way as when he’d first seen Snape’s memories, crouched over the pensive, his heart in his mouth as he had watched his enemy becoming his hero before his eyes.

Not that Snape really was his hero, not completely, not anymore. He’d become too human for that. He wraps his arms around himself. Did he really want Snape, did he really love him? He was old and grumpy, and never liked to do anything much. He was mean about everyone… But he was sharp and funny. He drawled insults like they were honey, smooth and sweet so that you almost wanted them to come. He had a presence that made you feel taller when he was directing his attention at you. He had the most powerful eyes in the world, capable of making your whole body react with one glance. He sometimes could be the scariest person ever created, bar none, not even Voldemort.

He looks back at the sky and feels cold. He thinks of Snape’s arms, his long greedy fingers groping at Harry’s flesh. He thinks of the way it felt, all the time, whether it was good or bad. He thinks of Snape’s body wrapped around him and closes his eyes.

But Snape was cold, and Harry knew that it wasn’t possible to wish that away, to ask for something different. It was deeper than that, it was a part of him, and even though throughout the day Harry had seen many, many other things, new things, in his expression, in his body language, that coldness seemed to stay permanently near the surface. He didn’t know if he had it in him to live with that. But then, he didn’t know if he had it in him to walk away from the only person who knew all of him, the only person who would ever know all of him.

 

Snape stands at the living room window and looks at his own reflection in the glass and the sitting room behind him. Now that he and Potter had communicated honestly, probably for the first time ever on any sort of real level, he felt unnerved. The boy was young, too young to understand everything, least of all Severus, wasn’t he? And he was still hopelessly naïve, slopping his love about for everyone to see. He was childish, unrealistic, and their age gap would never be able to rectify that. He would always be a boy to him, and Severus had already eaten up most of his youth, most of his freedom. Pangs of guilt cramp across his stomach and he takes a deep breath. Everything happened because it was going to happen, he tells himself. They’d have been fucking themselves up somewhere else if they hadn’t been doing it to each other. And then they would never have this, what they’ve got now: a bond so deep it was carved into their souls.

And Harry was hopeful and vibrant with it. He was easy to please and glowed when he was happy, like someone had brightened the world up a bit. He looked at Severus with near reverence and never did anything to conceal it.

And the boy had listened. He had heard and understood and he’d gone outside to think about it. He hadn’t made any rash decisions, hadn’t been driven by emotion. He hadn’t made any impossible promises or foolish declarations. He’d grown and by god he was strong. Strong in everything, his core, his heart, his actions. Truthfully, Severus thinks he’s the strongest person he’s ever heard of, let alone known.

He turns as he hears the back door clatter shut and the sound of Harry’s footsteps coming towards him.

 

 

 

 

PART TWO

 

**Apart**

 

1st August (just about) 2006

 

Severus isn’t sure when or how he got off the floor and out of the kitchen door. It’s like he’s just awoken from a dream and found himself in the garden staring intently at the white blossom of a plant that seems to have taken over most of his flower beds. He sighs and looks to the sunrise, then surprises himself by smiling. Stood as he is, looking at the sky in his grubby night shirt, with his thatch of hair and his vacant expression, he must look like he’s just escaped from an asylum. Which is sort of true he supposes.

He makes his way to the small bench that’s at the end of the garden, enjoying the tickle of the wet grass on the soles of his feet, and sits down. So, life, he thinks and sighs deeply. He has nothing and still here he sits, and still the sun comes up. Enough he tells himself. No more. He remembers promising himself the same thing a long time ago, promising that he would leave Harry Potter the bloody well alone. As if he could have, as if the boy would have let him. He can see now how inevitable it all was, how he and Potter were bound to each other. By grief, by confused love, by the loss of purpose that Dark Lord had taken with him in his death. Who else was there that could provide such an absolute link to their pasts than each other? There was nobody left with such an emotional claim to either of them.

He wonders if it is completely severed now, if this, his longest and deepest dive into madness has finally cut him and Potter apart. Half of him hopes that Potter’s found someone else. Half of him doesn’t want to think about it at all, but he supposes he must now, if he’s to move on. Maybe there’s someone out there for Severus. The thought is alarming enough for Severus to laugh at himself. He can’t imagine that he’ll ever have the energy to trust someone, but who knows. That was what the future was supposed to be about wasn’t it? The unexpected.

His feet are getting cold, but he doesn’t go in yet. When he does, he knows he’ll have letters to write, a house to tidy up, a life to rebuild. Right now the sun on his face is warm and soothing and Severus smiles as if this calm morning is all he’s ever known.

 

 

**Blue and Set-to**

 

31st July 2005

 

Home looks dark and unlit when Harry opens the front door. For a moment he has a sinking feeling that Snape’s not come back, but then he finds him in the sitting room, alone in the dark cradling a brandy glass in his long spindly fingers.

Harry hovers in the doorway, and Snape tries to make himself seem welcoming. It’s hard, Potter’s such a nervous nelly and his dithering always makes Severus more irritable.

“Tacitus not here?”

Obviously, Severus thinks. “No. Stayed over at the new Haven, wanted to start work early in the morning. Just us.”

Harry takes this as the invitation that it is, and walks to towards the sofa, too tired to go and sulk upstairs, too tired to not want Snape. He climbs on so he can curl up with his head on Severus’s side.

Severus kisses the top of his head and runs his fingers through his hair. “Hello,” he purrs, kissing Harry’s ruffle of hair again.

“Hello,” Harry says through a yawn, already feeling sleep numbing his senses, Snape’s breath drifting into the distance.

Snape lets the boy doze against him, running his hands through his hair stroking the warm skin at the back of his neck. He shifts and takes Harry’s glasses off, floating them to the coffee table and placing them next to the wrapped parcel that Harry hadn’t even noticed when he’d come in. Harry doesn’t stir when Snape runs his fingers across the indent where his glasses have been on the bridge of his nose, along the delicate skin of his eyelids.

“I got you a present,” Severus whispers. “Aren’t you going to open it?” Harry doesn’t move and Snape watches closely for any flicker of consciousness. “I love you,” he whispers, the words are barely more than a breath against Harry’s face. “You know that, don’t you?”

In response Harry pushes his head further against Snape’s tummy and lets out a small snore.

 

**Holiday**

 

July 31st 2004

 

They’re sat on a pretty little bench by the harbour’s edge, both having had too much wine with dinner, they thought a walk might be in order. They’re quiet, the only sounds are that of the water sloshing against the harbour wall and the eaters in the restaurant opposite. Harry’s looking out into the sea, comfortable and drunk and with the intense buzzing presence of Severus sat close to him on the small bench.

Snape looks at the boy’s profile, rosy with drink, his eyes staring out though Snape knows he’s aware of him looking. His long dark lashes, his clear soft skin, the curve of his shoulder and the way he shivers though it isn’t cold, and Snape suddenly wants him, truly wants him, not for the game or the winning, but because he’s here and he’s beautiful.

He reaches a hand to a strand of hair, messy and long and tucks it behind Harry’s ear. Harry turns to him, looks into Snape’s black eyes, scared and defiant, and doesn’t hesitate to kiss back as Snape pushes their mouths together.

Harry tastes of the wine from dinner, his lips cool and sweet and pliant as Severus brushes them with his tongue. Something hot and alive unfurls in Snape’s gut and he pulls the boy tighter against him.

Harry’s heart pounds in his chest and he collapses into the embrace, a hand coming around the back of Snape’s head to grip his hair tightly – he needs something to hold onto as he feels the world sliding from under his feet. He’s dazed when Snape breaks away and pulls him to standing, kissing him again before dragging him back down the harbour path.

They make their way back to the hotel, stopping to push each other up against doorways, to kiss and bite and grab at the flesh they can reach under Snape’s robes and Harry’s t-shirt. As Potter slams him against a wall, his leg snaking his way in between Snape’s thigh and his mouth hungrily sucking at his neck, a voice far away tells Severus that it wasn’t supposed to feel like this, but the thought drifts away as Harry bites down hard on his collar bone and palms him through his robes.

They arrive at the hotel, red-faced and dishevelled, ignoring the looks they get as they hurry up the stairs, Harry leading the way to Snape’s room. He fumbles with the key, a weird card thing that fits in the lock a certain way, his hands trembling under the weight of what’s happening, rushing in case it suddenly loses momentum and stops.

Once inside Snape’s sliding his hands all over him, stroking and rubbing, slipping the t-shirt over his head and pushing him on to the bed, taking his own robe off with swift ease. Harry’s chest is moving with his panted breath, the skin stretching to show muscle that Severus touches with his hands then his mouth. They struggle out of the rest of their clothes and then Severus is between Harry’s legs sucking and gripping, prodding with deft fingers at his arsehole, and Harry is flailing on the bed and groaning and grasping the side of Snape’s head with one hand and trying to get a grip on the bed sheet with the other. All too soon Harry is coming and apologising and trying to reach for Severus’s arm to hold onto, but he is rising and spreading Harry’s legs, his own cock in his hand slickened with something, his slippery fingers prodding at Harry until he’s got his fingers deep inside him and Harry is writhing again.

Snape climbs over him and pushes down hard until he is engulfed, and grinds his weight down. He keeps his eyes on their bodies, knowing that seeing Harry’s expression will push him over, but then his hands are being moved, so that they hold Harry’s above his head, so that the boy is stretched out and held down and Snape sees his face, his eyes half-closed, his mouth open and panting, and Severus comes harder than he has in his life.

With Snape’s weight collapsed on top of his aching body, his hair draped over Harry’s face, his arms still held firmly above his head, Harry feels like everything in the universe has fallen into perfect place.

Snape waits to catch his breath as the world, his world, seems to come crashing down around his head. He makes himself climb alongside the panting boy, who instantly rolls over and hooks a proprietary arm over Snape’s stomach. As they lie there, their breath evening out, Harry sits to reach for a sheet to drape over them and wriggles back down even closer. Wide awake, Snape listens to his breathing in his ear and feels his weight against him become heavier. He looks towards the doorway.

 

 

**Harry Day**

 

July 31st 2003

 

Snape’s sitting in his living room, a book spread on his lap that he’s not really taking in, it’s just there to try an wile away the hours of another long eventless evening. He takes another sip of red wine and tries to focus on the page in front of him. When his doorbell rings he’s almost eager to answer it, although he knows who it will be.

He greets Harry with an arch of his eyebrow and a slightly tipsy sneer. Harry matches his look, defiance in his folded arms until Severus rolls his eyes and retreats back into his gloomy house.

Harry follows him into the sitting room, sitting down noisily as Severus picks up his book and looks at it with well-acted interest, his brow furrowed as he pretends to read the page.

“May I please have some wine?” Harry asks, from where he’s splayed in the corner of the sofa, his legs tucked up off the floor.

“It smells like you’ve had enough already,” Snape says, not looking up from his book, but he summons the bottle and glass and floats them into Harry’s hand.

“How was your day?” Harry asks taking a glug of wine and slapping his lips together. He grins as Snape frowns at him.

“I spent the best part of it with you.”

“You old flatterer you,” Harry says and nudges Snape’s thigh with his foot.

“I meant time, not enjoyment. And I’d keep those toes away from me if you want to keep them.”

Harry pokes him again with his toes, pulling them back quickly out of Severus’s grasp. Severus closes his book and places it on the table, and drains his drink. There’s barely half a glass of wine left as he pour out the remains of the bottle. He eyes the glass in Potter’s hand, full to the brim, a trickle sliding down the stem and pooling on the base.

Harry shrugs, and takes a slurp and smiles as Snape watches him.

“They all send their love by the way,” he says, swallowing.

“Who’s they?”

“You know, your beloved ex-pupils and comrades in arms… Some of them were most sorry not to see you.”

Severus gives him a blank look.

“They know all about you of course. I like to keep them updated on whatever criticisms you have on me, what your latest fit of rage was about, that sort of thing. They know we’re friends.” The words sound funny, like they make Harry too aware of his lips to say them properly.

“Do they?” Snape asks, not knowing what else to say. He’s too boozy to come out with a reprimand about how Potter is terming the two of them, and right now doesn’t really care anyway.  He gets to his feet. “More wine I think.” The alcohol in his system suddenly becomes apparent and he grabs an arm of the sofa for a support.

“I agree,” Harry says, trying to drink of much as his wine as he can in one go. He’s glad that Snape’s already out the door and doesn’t witness the dribble that seeps down his chin and drips a stain on to his t-shirt.

Down in his wine cellar (a rather grandiose name for what really is a corner of his laboratory), Severus picks out a 1979 merlot, just so he can tell Potter that it’s older than he is. He squints at the bottle to make sure of the date and then starts climbing the old wooden stairs.

 

Later, when they have nearly finished the third bottle of wine (or possibly fourth), Harry moves up the sofa, casually, like it is simply to hear Severus better, and when he ends up leaning his head against Snape’s shoulder, it feels so natural that neither of them notices. They both watch the fire that Severus had lit so they could turn all the lights off and still just about see each other (though Severus is so drunk he can barely make out anything, except the glass in his hand and Potter’s hot body curled up against him).

“What about Lily?” Harry suddenly asks into the silence. He feels Snape’s whole body stiffen and instinctively places a hand on his stomach. “I mean, you’ve never said.”

Severus exhales deeply through his nose. “There’s nothing to say.”

“But – you loved her. How? Why?” He hears Snape tapping his teeth together and rubs at the hard, muscley flesh he can feel through Snape’s clothes, as if that is the key to get him to share his secrets. “Would you have married her? If you could have, I mean.”

“Yes,” Severus answers without hesitation. Of course he would have, he’d have done anything, anything. He feels Potter’s body sag into him, and puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer and for the first time feels comfort that his grief is shared. He thinks of Lily and she’s sixteen and beautiful and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and smiling at him across a corridor. In his mind she’s always sixteen, like he can’t permit her to have had a life without him, to have fallen in love, got married, to have been pregnant, have become a mother. To have been Harry Potter’s mother, Harry Potter who is stroking Snape’s belly and rubbing his face against Snape’s chest and who Snape doesn’t even want to move away from. Harry Potter, whose face is so close that Severus can feel the tightening of his neck as he swallows.

Harry gives Snape a squinting look. Their both more drunk than they ever have been together, at least this quietly, and he can see the alcohol in Snape’s face, like his features have all slid a bit and his jaws not tense and his brow’s not scrunched. “Would you change it? Would you have her live, and me...” he swallows, “Me, you know… not?” The question is crass but it suddenly feels very important that he should know.

Severus looks at him and sighs. He reaches a lazy arm and takes Harry’s glasses of his face, and the movement is so slow and odd that it makes Harry shiver. He blinks back as Snape stares at him, and doesn’t move when he slides a thumb down his cheek.

“So you could live,” Severus says, the words gently slurring together, and Harry doesn’t know who he’s talking too, or looking at even, if it’s him or Lily. He stays still as Snape traces his fingers across his scar.

“Her boy,” Snape says and his voice is croaky and Harry can smell the wine that is carried on his hot breath. “ _The_ boy,” he says, with a snort of laughter and then, “World without Harry Potter?” like he couldn’t possibly fathom it.

“Your life without Harry Potter,” Harry says and it’s supposed to sound glib but doesn’t, because he whispers it like a question and chews on his lip afterwards.

Severus snorts again, and then says, “You are in my life,” with a shrug.

“But do you want me to be?” Harry asks, sitting up and feeling oddly sober, especially in contrast to Snape’s loose eyes and blurry speech.

Snape looks at him groggily and frowns back. “No,” he says, and then when Harry goes to move away he makes a clumsy grab for him and pulls him back against his chest. “No,” he says again, and slides a hand up Harry’s back and into his hair.

 

**Flown Home**

 

31st July 2002

 

Long after Harry’s bedroom door has clicked shut, Severus sits on his bed watching the door. He’s oddly quiet with his rage. Why had he let Potter back into his house, why hadn’t he simply slammed the door on him? He knows the answer, knows that the years of conditioning bestowed upon him by Albus-bloody-Dumbledore means that he will never be able to turn his back on the boy when he’s in distress. He wonders what Albus would make of the way their relationship has developed, wonders what he would think of his golden boy’s fondness for violence. It’s enough to make Severus laugh, but he doesn’t, lest Potter hears him and comes barging into his room again.

Still, the boy isn’t in any sort of distress anymore, not now he’s sober again and back to being as audacious as ever. Severus is entirely free to eject him from his house, which he will do just as soon as he completely calms down. There would be no point going down when he’s so incensed because that would only start them up again. And besides, he wants to think carefully of what he will say to ensure that Potter doesn’t come back in a hurry.

He lights a cigarette and wonders about the Russian meat-head Potter was always photographed with in the tabloids. Maybe the meat-head wasn’t as dim he looked and had severed ties. Or maybe Potter had ditched him. For a moment Severus is enraged anew at the thought of the meat-head turning up at his door and causing some sort of emotionally charged scene which Severus would have to referee. He almost marches downstairs to kick Potter out before his jilted lover has a chance to arrive, but then remembers that his house is Unplottable. And anyway, he hasn’t finished his cigarette yet.

What got him, what always got him, was Potter’s satisfied face after Severus had had a bout with him. And the fact that Severus was never quite able to stop himself. Well this would be the last time, Potter would be out on his ear any minute now. …But then, it was getting late. It looked like dawn was creeping up, and Potter was probably asleep which means that Severus would have to wake him and the boy would be grumpy, and they’d start fighting again and then he’d be back to where he’d started. No, best leave it until morning, he thinks, and lies back on his bed.

 

 

**Havens**

 

July 31st 2001

 

Severus wakes with a start. For a moment he thinks he’s back in Hogwarts, the air too calm and still to be that of his own house. Moonlight peeks through the small window and he recognises the sparse space as his room in the Haven. Comforted he rolls over to go back to sleep, but something is needling him, something in his magic. He opens his eyes and sees Potter. Startled, he sits upright and claws in the darkness but there is nothing for his hand to land on. Of course there isn’t, he tells himself. Potter is far away and no doubt making someone else’s life hell right now. The thought is supposed to be reassuring, but Severus finds himself grinding his teeth. For the first time in weeks, he wants a drink. Now wide awake he stands and reaches for his robe. He looks at the door, then back around the room. It seems too small, too contained, to hold a creature such as him, but he makes himself calm down and sits back on the bed. A Muggle newspaper is folded on the night stand, and he picks it up to give it another read though he doesn’t really understand much of the content. It is only then that he notices the date: _31 st July 2001_. No wonder Potter’s been creeping into his mind; it’s the boy’s birthday. He feels relief that Ailfrid doesn’t subscribe to the Prophet, no doubt that would be full of the nation’s sweetheart and his smug little face. He attempts to read an article on Muggle economics but can’t concentrate and eventually flings the newspaper against the wall. It wasn’t supposed to be like this anymore, he thinks bitterly. He’d done everything he could, he was working for the good cause, he was moving on. Why, then, was everything permeated with this sense of loss, with this burning resentment? And why did his mind seem so steadfast in attaching those things to Potter? He was supposed to be free, finally released from the thankless task of being Potter’s minder the day Bellatrix Lestrange was unceremoniously killed, but here he is, years later and only just managing to pull some sort of life together out of the crappy tatters he’d been left with. The room’s starting to feel too small again, and by Merlin, he needs a drink.

Later, when Severus has leaned out of his window and performed a complex set of spells so that he can summon the whisky he has hidden in his potions shed, he lies atop his bed and lets his mind drift. Sated enough by the near empty bottle clutched against his side, he stops himself from editing his thoughts so that when a memory of Potter appears, lounging on his settee at Severus’ house, he does not chase it away. Potter’s bare feet toe the edge of a cushion and his fingers tap at the book he is supposed to be studying, but Severus knows that he is not concentrating. From his vantage point of the armchair across the room, he watches Potter’s face in idle thought. It’s so clean, he thinks, when it is empty of expression. So calm. It takes a moment before he realises that Potter is looking back at him. He clears his throat.

“You’re supposed to be reading.”

“Yeah,” Potter says, and folds the book away. “And so are you.”

“Yes, but it’s near impossible to concentrate with you fidgeting constantly.”

“Well, it’s quite hard to concentrate with you looking at me every few minutes…” Potter smirks at him and the memory fades. As the sky outside grows lighter, Severus slips into sleep.

 

 

**Amongst Company**

 

July 31st 1999

 

The house rings with silence and Snape leans his head against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. He can hear Potter scurrying around scrunching up wrapping paper and collecting all the dirty teacups. He’s given up on telling him to use his bloody wand. If the fool wants to spend his energy as if he were a magicless house elf, then that was his business.

The dipping sofa cushions startle his eyes open into a room that has suddenly darkened. Potter’s holding a mug of tea and on the small table is a cup of steaming coffee.

Snape gives a small nod of thanks and tries to remember why they’re in such close proximity and not screaming at each other. The day comes back to him. Seeing Minerva must have done him some good, he thinks, rare as it is that he gets to have a conversation with a reasonable adult.

“Nice of Minerva to come today, wasn’t it,” Potter asks him as if he can read his mind, and Snape gives him a sidelong glance and a stiff nod. He summons a bottle of brandy from the liquor cabinet and pours a glug into his coffee.

In the gloom Potter seems a dull shape to his left, two glimmering splinters of reflected fire light. “What was the gift she got you?” he asks.

Harry scratches his bare ankle, lifting up his pyjama bottoms to reach the spot.

“A book. They all got me books. Or games of solitaire. Strictly indoors activities.” Without looking, Snape can see the sulk on Potter’s mouth.

“You could always own up to your penchant for invisible Quidditch,” Snape tells him. After two weeks of living with a housebound teenager, Snape had practically thrown him into the garden, too old and tired and sick to keep pace with Potter’s vibrant hostility all hours of the day. “Or the fact that you go to knitting for old bats or whatever it’s called. Next time you can ask for a book of sock patterns or what not.”

“It’s called Knit and Natter, and we’re not making socks anymore, we’re on to doilies now. I’m doing a large pink one for the dining table.”

Snape looks at him quickly and is annoyed to see that Potter is joking.

“And anyway, you liked my socks.”

“Yes, well, what they lacked in aesthetic charm they made up for in warmth.”

“At least I made them black,” Harry says through a yawn, watching Snape lean his head back on the sofa and close his eyes, a level of relaxed that Harry is rarely privy to and therefore treasures. In the firelight, his features are softened, the lines around his face looking gentler.

“You could come along, you know.” He tells Snape. “I think it would do Blanche some good to get a social life.”

Snape’s eyes open and slide over him. “I’ve told you before Potter, do not call me Blanche.” There’s no menace in his voice, they’re both aware that this is one of the rare soft bits that they occasionally let themselves slip into, too comfortable to waste effort in spoiling.

He watches Harry grin and stretch back onto the arm of the sofa. “I don’t know why you don’t like it, I like being Mavis every now and then. And the Knit and Natterers are a hoot.”

“You’re deranged. Nothing in the world could entice me to either knit or natter, especially not whilst dressed up in elderly drag and answering to the name of Blanche.”

Harry chuckles. “Well, they give you free tea and biscuits.”

“Hmmm,” Snape says. “Maybe if they gave out bottomless glasses of gin and tonic.”

 

 

**To Spinner’s End**

 

31st July 1998

 

Kingsley Shacklebolt, and a couple of Ministry lackeys stand around Severus’s sofa in what he wonders is a rehearsed official pose – hands clasped behind their backs, solemn blank faces as they look down at him stretched out under a quilt.

He doesn’t speak, just tilts his head back to meet Shacklebolts’s gaze and raises his eyebrows. The gesture relaxes Kingsley and he unclasps his hands and perches on the coffee table, so that he and Snape are face to face. The lackeys don’t even move their eyes.

“Two things,” Shacklebolt says, holding up two fingers in Severus’s face. “Firstly, you’ve been given the Order of Merlin, first class.”

Snape looks at him, unblinking.

“Which we can publicise, if you would like.”

“I’m supposed to be dead.”

“Well, we could publicise that we’ve given it to you posthumously, until you’re ready to come out of witness protection.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why bother with any of it.”

Shacklebolt purses his lips. “So that when it is revealed to the world that you are alive, people might have gotten used to you as one of the good guys by then.”

Severus mulls this over, then narrows his eyes.

“So that the Ministry doesn’t have to answer so many difficult questions about why they protected a wanted murderer, you mean?”

Shacklebolt’s doesn’t flinch.

“Yes, and so that we do not have to publicly go into as much detail about the particulars of what happened. So that we do not have to have all the years worth of evidence dragged back out for the world to see and form opinions on.”

Snape nods once. “Very well then. Publicise away.”

Kingsley nods back. “The second thing is a chance to shorten your parole.”

Snape’s eyes are alert and unblinking.

“Harry Potter,” Shacklebolt states.

“What about him?”

“As you know, he’s still very much a marked man and –”

“Yes and you and all your official gimps seem to have done nothing at all to change that. I bet you’re still letting him toddle around the streets at night, aren’t you? He needs to be locked up, he needs a series of unplottable safe houses, and a team of fucking Aurors putting up charmed protection around the clock! But where is he? In a _burrow_ , with a couple of fuddy-duddy parents who don’t seem able to comprehend the gravity the situation.”

Snape’s sat up for his rant, his hair sticking up at the back and a finger jabbing in Kingsley’s direction. Kingsley hides a smile behind his hand, and waves the other to calm Snape down.

“He’s protected, there are people with him all the time, the Burrow has had enough magical protection –”

“You people seem to think that Bellatrix is nothing more than someone with a bit of a temper. She will not stop until he’s dead and – ”

“We know your view on it Snape, this is what we’ve come to talk to you about.”

Snape slowly retreats his pointing finger, but he doesn’t stop scowling.

“We think you’re right, we think that Harry needs better protection.”

“And? What does that have to do with my parole?”

“What I’m putting to you is… What I am suggesting is,” Kinglsey trails off as he fails to think of a way to soften his proposal. “Look, basically we think that a good way of keeping Harry safe is to hide him here.”

Kingsley watches as Snape becomes very still.

“To the rest of the world, you’re dead and your house was blown up by Bellatrix weeks ago. We keep thedisillusionment charm up so that from the outside your house is no more than a pile of rubble.”

Snape starts shaking his head.

“No. They’ll still come looking, they’ll find him.”

“No they won’t. Will give a press conference saying that Harry Potter has officially gone into hiding overseas. We’ll plant false traps for Bellatrix and –”

Snape laughs. “As if Bellatrix will fall for that, she’ll know, she’ll fucking sniff him out. It won’t work.”

“I would like to request that you give me and my staff some credit to know what we are doing. Some of us have been catching Dark Wizards since before you became one.”

For a moment they stare at each other, until Snape concedes with a small nod of his head.

“The plan we have is complex, but it will work if we’re given enough time where Harry can be kept in a safe place.”

“And you think that that is with me?”

“We have already altered memories so that only a handful of people know that you are still alive, that will not spread beyond those people. We will not let anyone out of that circle know where either you or Harry are. It’s right under their noses, I know, but sometimes that is the safest place to be, as well you know.”

Snape nods distractedly, his mind already running through the implications of such a plan “And we will be imprisoned in the house, this house, together?”

“Not imprisoned exactly, but yes. This will become your safe house. I know you have made it very clear that you do not want to see Harry, but for doing this we will cut your sentence so that it ends the moment we catch Lestrange. ”

“Which means indefinitely. I’d have to live with him, in this small house, indefinitely.”

“Yes. You’ve been very vocal about how you don’t think we’re doing a very good job protecting him.”

“Which you’re not.”

“Exactly, so we’re willing to hand it over to you. You protect him. No one can argue the fact that you are one of the most powerful wizards in the country. We know you’d do everything in your power to keep him safe.”

Snape eyes him shrewdly again. “You mean you wouldn’t be accountable if my actions don’t exactly tow the ministries line of ‘disarm and disable.’”

Kingsley keeps any reaction out of his face. “He’ll be safe,” he says.

“And if I don’t do it?”

“Your parole will be kept at five years, you will be under surveillance, have restricted movements and –”

“Not me, _him_. What will happen to him if I don’t do it?”

“Oh. Well, he’ll be moved into a safe house like you’ve suggested. Somewhere unplottable, Ministry guards, that sort of thing.”

“Well, that puts my mind at ease. Ministry guards… And how would it work, him coming here?”

“We’d give you false identities, something that doesn’t draw attention, add a guard over you and start protecting the area.”

“When?”

“Today.”

Snape nods, and tries to see if there’s anything they’ve missed, if there’s anything equal to Potter’s safety than having Harry under _his_ watch, but he can’t think of a better alternative. Very slightly, he nods his head.

“So you’ll go and collect him?”

Snape nods again.

“Good, we’ll keep extra security on your floo network and the Burrow’s for the rest of the day.”

He offers Snape his hand which is absently taken. Severus watches Shacklebolt straighten his robes out and direct the others to the fireplace with a nod of his head.

As he watches them shoot away one-by-one, he wonders if he’s just embarked upon a brilliantly clever plan or the stupidest thing he’s ever done.

Landing neatly on the Ministry carpet of his office, Kingsley turns and smiles at his colleagues as they step out of the hearth.

“Told you he’d say yes,” he says clapping his big hands together.

 

 

**Epilogue**

 

31st July 2008

 

“You don’t always have to make it so fucking obvious that you’re having a shit time. There’s something called politeness which means you pretend to be enjoying yourself.” Harry kicks off his shoe and it hits the wall with a thud. He slams the door behind himself and tries to hook off his other shoe, but the laces are tied to tightly.

“Trust me I’m well learnt in the act of pretending to enjoy myself.” Snape sweeps his cloak off and flings it at the hook behind the door. Harry scowls at it when it lands gracefully. “Have you forgotten that I live with you?”

He marches through the house to the kitchen, and Harry limps after him, still only part of his foot coming out of his shoe.

“And anyway, why an earth would I pretend to be having a good time if I wasn’t? Isn’t that lying?” He slams the cabinet doors open and closed, looking for the tin of coffee, knocking things onto the floor as he rummages.

“Above the bread, where it’s always kept,” Harry say, trying to stay balanced on one foot as he snaps his laces with a jab of his wand. He throws the poxy shoe against the wall.

Snape snatches the coffee tin out of the cupboard and opens the lid with such force that the contents are flung up in his face and onto the kitchen floor.

“Buggery fuck!” he bellows.

Harry clears up the mess with his wand and floats a new packet of coffee from out of the cupboard so that it bobs in Severus’s face before he snarls and snatches it out of the air.

“And keep it down,” Harry tells him. “You’ll wake Teddy.”

“He’s not here you drunken fucking imbecile. He’s at Hermione and Ron’s, remember?”

“Don’t call me a fucking imbecile.”

“Then stop acting like one.” Snape slams the coffee pot down on the hob and scrabbles about with some matches, before giving up and lighting the gas with a burst of brilliant flame from his wand that scorches the wall and turns the percolator completely black.

“Nice one,” Harry drawls, leaning against the counter top. Snape takes a deep breath and holds on to the counter to stop himself from clutching Potter’s throat in his hand.

“I wish I knew what your fucking problem was. Nothing’s ever good enough for you, nothing’s ever quite up to your standard, is it? The restaurant, the people, the conversations.”

“Sitting in a greasy Italian listening to morons talk about their hair, or worse their fucking offspring, like they are the first people on the planet to reproduce, as they get steadily more intoxicated and start repeating whatever pointless drivel they’d said the first time around, so that I’m stuck in a fucking hellish loop of banality that makes me want to stab myself in the eyes with a fork just so I have something else to engage with, leaves me a little in want, yes Potter. How shrewd of you to have noticed.”

Harry squints at him though droopy eyes. “You’ve been in a black mood all day, don’t blame it on my friends. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong!” Snape roars and slams his arms down on the counter, knocking his coffee cup to the floor which smashes across the tiles.

“Yeah, looks like it. If you’re just going to rage about and smash up the house then I’m going to Hogwarts. You can spend the summer shouting about nothing for all I fucking care.”

“Yes that’s right Potter, hot foot it to your little safety nest. Wouldn’t want to keep you in the real world for five fucking minutes.”

“You can talk. How long are you going to keep holding on to that pit of a house in Spinner’s End? You’ve spent more time there than here lately.”

“That’s because your fucking incessant existence is driving me up the fucking wall. I just don’t want to fucking look at you any more.”

“Then go! No-one’s keeping you here, there’s not a noose around your neck no matter how hard you try and convince yourself there is. Fuck off and go.”

“No. You go.”

“No. What about Teddy?”

“We’ll be fine without you, I’m sure he’d be quite relived at the freedom away from your endless coddling.”

“My coddling? Who is it that grounded him for coming home five minutes late? And for having a girl in his bedroom.”

“He’s too fucking young to be doing that sort of thing”

“He’s twelve Severus, he’s old enough for a girl friend. They’re just kids mucking about; it’s healthy.”

Severus snorts and toes some of the smashed china by his feet with his boot.

“Just because your first kiss wasn’t until you were middle aged, doesn’t mean you should take it out on Teddy.”

“My first kiss was when I was eleven and it was with your mother. She let me put my tongue right in her mouth.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Harry says and covers his face with his hands, though he’s shocked enough to be cheered up slightly. He looks up at Snape and smirks, and for a minute all the anger is gone, but then Snape’s face is clouding over and he’s curling his lip again.

“So are you going or what?” Snape demands, resolute in not letting his anger be deflected.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s my house.”

“Don’t you mean _our_ house, dear heart?”

“I fucking paid for it.”

“Which is what it always comes down to with you, doesn’t it? Money. I’m sorry we can’t all be million pound business moguls. Some of us have to live in the real world.”

“Well you could sell your fucking house for a start. You’ve got enough equity; you’re just too much of a coward to let it go.”

“And assign myself to a life stuck here with you?  We both know I’m not that stupid.”

“Well go on then, fuck off! I don’t want you here anymore.”

Their faces blaze at each other and Snape’s almost coming towards him and Harry’s bracing himself for his touch, but Severus changes his mind and stomps over the broken china and out the kitchen door.

 

**Epilogue Part Two**

 

“I never really kissed your mother,” Snape says into the darkness. Harry’s shuffled so far over that Snape’s back is at the edge of the bed, his body spooning Harry’s in an elegant curl.

“I know,” Harry says, half asleep. “You told me when you were drunk once.”

“What did I say?” He nudges Harry’s neck with his nose to stop him from dozing off.”

“You said that your first kiss was with Grenelda Gibley when you were fourteen. You said she had clammy skin and a large pustule that you kept trying to avoid as she pushed her face against yours. You thought you might accidentally pop it with your nose. She kept grabbing at your hands and trying to put them on herself. You said that after that you were really quite put off girls and all their ungainly roundness and that was when you finally decided you belonged in the other camp.”

There’s a pause and Harry giggles a great dirty laugh into the pillows.

“I don’t know what’s more surprising, that I told you all that or that you remembered it so precisely.”

“It wasn’t something I was likely to forget. It was too enlightening.” Snape nips the back of Harry’s neck with his teeth, and gets a jab from an elbow in return.

“And when did you realise you were _in the other camp_?”

Harry sighs and Severus sees him clutch at the corner of the blanket.

“…You I guess.”

“Me? What, just the very fact that I exist?” he says in mock boast and is surprise when he isn’t contradicted

Harry sighs again. “Sort of.”

Snape nudges him again with his nose and snakes his hand up to finger his nipple.

 


End file.
